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■  THE  LIBRARY 

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■  THE  UNIVERSITY 

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I  RIVERSIDE 

GIFT  OF 

Col.   Arnold  W.   Shutter 


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THE    LITE'RATtr    WRINGS    Sei^ieS, 
SHAKESPEARE  &  STRATFORD 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TOMB   IN    STRATFORD   CHURCH 


SHAKESPEARE 


STRATFORD 

sr 


HENRY  Cf;  SHELLEY 

ILLUSTRATED  FROM  PHOTOGRAPHS 
Br  THE  AUTHOR 


BOSTON 
LITTLE,  BROWN  AND  COMPANY 


$MM 


9 


Copyright 
First  published  1913 


1PRINTED  AT 
THF.   BALLANTYNE   PRESS 
LONDON,    ENGLAND 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I  :  THE    BIRTHPLACE 
II  :  NEW    PLACE 

III  :  THE   CHURCH 

IV  :  THE   TOWN 

V  :  THE   SHAKESPEARE  VILLAGES 
NOTES   FOR  THE   TOURIST 


PAGE   I 

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199 

For  permission  to  utilize  the  manuscript  of  the  auction 
address  of  Edmund  Robins,  the  author  desires  to  express 
his  grateful  acknowledgment  to  the  Trustees   of  Shake- 
speare's Birthplace 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


Shakespeare's  Tomb 

Shakespeare's  Birthplace,  Henley  Street 

New  Place  and  Nash's  House 

Inside  the  Site  of  New  Place 

Holy  Trinity  Church 

The  Avon  at  Stratford 

The  Clopton  Bridge 

Grammar  School  and  Guild  Chapel 

Harvard  House 

The  Red  Horse  Hotel  (Washington Irving's  Hotel) 

The  Shakespeare  Memorial  Theatre 

The  Shakespeare  Memorial  Fountain 

Entrance  to  Charlecote  Park 

The  Shakespeare  Cottage  at  Snitterfield 

Mary  Arden's  Cottage,  Wilmcote 

Anne  Hathaway's  Cottage,  Shottery 


Frontispiece 

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CHAPTER  I  :  The  Birthplace 

WASN'T  he  foxy  to  choose  a  cute 
little  place  like  that  in  which  to 
write  his  plays  ?  " 

Perhaps  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  explain  that 
the  questioner  was  a  daughter  of  Uncle  Sam,  but 
for  the  sake  of  elucidation  it  is  needful  to  add 
that  the  "  cute  little  place  "  referred  to  was  a  trim, 
half-timbered  building  in  Henley  Street,  Stratford- 
on-Avon,  and  that  the  "he  "  was  none  other  than 
William  Shakespeare.' 

It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  the  picturesque 
question  was  not  in  accordance  with  knowledge 
or  tradition.  There  is  nothing  to  support  the 
implied  theory  that  "  Hamlet "  and  the  other 
plays  were  written  in  the  Henley  Street  cottage, 
nor  do  any  of  the  many  legends  clustering  around 
that  structure  claim  for  it  so  high  an  honour. 
But  to  credit  Shakespeare  with  the  deliberate 
choice  of  a  literary  workshop  is  all  of  a  piece  with 
the  uncertainty  in  which  so  much  of  his  life-story 
is  involved. 


SHzAKESPEiARE  <i4ND  STRATFORD 

Most  pilgrims  to  Stratford-on-Avon  have  a 
clearer  notion  of  what  they  seek  when  they  turn 
their  footsteps  in  the  direction  of  Henley  Street. 
Following  the  order  of  nature,  their  first  desire 
on  reaching  Shakespeare's  town  is  to  gaze  upon 
the  shrine  of  his  nativity,  and  for  more  than  a 
century  and  a  half  tradition  has  declared  that 
the  three-gabled  cottage  on  the  north  side  of  the 
street  in  question  is  the  birthplace. 

But  is  it  ?     As  it  ill  becomes  the  Shakespearean 
to  "  worship  shadows  and  adore  false  shapes,"  the 
question  should  be  faced  boldly  and  regardless  of 
consequences.     Let    it    be    admitted,   then,   even 
though    such    honesty   is  rare,   that    there    is  an 
older  tradition  which  is  fatal  to  the  claims  of  the 
Henley  Street  house.     A  late  echo  of  that  tra- 
dition sounded  in  the  ears  of  Washington  Irving, 
for  did  not  the  old  sexton  express  "  a  doubt  "  as 
to  the  genuineness  of  the  birthplace  ?     It  is  true 
that  the  kindly  Geoffrey  Crayon,  in  keeping  with 
his  character  as  a  "  Gent.,"  explained  the  sexton's 
suspicion  on  the  score  of  envy,  but  if  he  had  been 
acquainted  with  the  lore  of  the  learned  and  in- 
dustrious William  Oldys  he  would  have  realized 
2 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

that  the  sexton  had  good  reason  for  his  scepticism. 
Oldys,  in  fact,  in  the  first  quarter  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  had  recorded  a  tradition  to  the 
effect  that  Shakespeare  was  born  in  a  house  near 
the  churchyard,  and  this  legend  persisted  until  the 
nineteenth  century.  "  A  house  near  the  river," 
as  the  laborious  J.  O.  Halliwell-Phillipps  wrote, 
"  called  the  Brook  House,  now  pulled  down,  was 
some  years  since  asserted  to  have  been  the  birth- 
place of  Shakespeare." 

What  makes  matters  still  worse  for  the  Henlev 
Street  shrine  is  that  the  earliest  visitors  who 
were  drawn  to  Stratford-on-Avon  by  the  fame  of 
Shakespeare  entirely  ignored  its  existence.  One 
of  the  most  curious  and  unnoticed  facts  in  the 
biography  of  the  dramatist  is  that  he  had  been 
dead  some  seven  years  before  his  connexion  with 
Stratford-on-Avon  was  recorded  in  print.  Of 
course  his  name  had  appeared  in  contemporary 
literature  long  prior  to  1616.  So  much  emphasis 
has  been  laid  upon  our  shadowy  knowledge  of  the 
poet  that  it  is  often  forgotten  that  his  name  is  of 
frequent  occurrence  in  prose  and  verse  from  1592 
onwards.     The  year  just  named  was  the  date  of 

3 


I. 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Robert  Greene's  splenetic  and  envious  reference 
to  the  young  dramatist  as  "  the  only  Shakescene 
in  a  countrie,"  but  three  years  later  he  was 
christened  "  Sweet  Shakespeare,"  and  thence- 
forward the  chorus  of  his  praise  constantly  swelled 
in  volume.  And  yet  not  one  of  the  numerous 
references  has  any  allusion  to  Stratford. 

Undoubtedly  his  fellow  players  and  poets  were 
well  aware  that  Shakespeare  was  a  native  of 
Stratford,  and  yet  it  was  not  until  1623,  when  he 
had  been  dead  seven  years,  that  his  name  was 
associated  with  the  town  on  the  Avon.  That  topo- 
graphical service  was  rendered  by  Leonard  Digges, 
one  of  the  four  poets  who  contributed  com- 
mendatory verses  to  the  famous  First  Folio,  which 
marked  the  earliest  attempt  to  give  the  world  a 
complete  edition  of  Shakespeare's  plays.  The 
volume  was  published  in  1623,  and  it  was  not 
until  that  date  that  the  reading  public,  through 
Leonard  Digges's  assertion  that  Shakespeare's 
plays  would  be  alive  when  "  Time  dissolves  thy 
Stratford  monument,"  learnt  the  meagre  fact 
that  the  poet  was  buried  in  that  Warwickshire 
town. 

4 


THE   "BIRTHPLACE 


Such  a  casual  reference,  however,  may  easily 
have  been  overlooked  by  those  curious  in  bio- 
graphical details,  and  hence/ it  is  highly  probable 
that  until  the  appearance  of  Sir  William  Dug- 
dale's  monumental  work  on  the  antiquities  of 
Warwickshire  in  1656  few  were  aware  of  Shake- 
speare's close  connexion  with  Stratford.  To 
Dugdale,  then,  belongs  the  credit  of  advertising 
the  association  in  an  authoritative  manner,  for 
in  concluding  his  notice  of  Stratford  he  wrote  : 
"  One  thing  more,  in  reference  to  this  ancient 
town,  is  observable,  that  it  gave  birth  and 
sepulture  to  our  late  famous  poet,  Will.  Shake- 
speare." And  the  antiquary  did  not  confine  him- 
self to  that  brief  reference ;  in  his  account  of  the 
tombs  in  Holy  Trinity  Church  he  quoted  the 
inscription  on  the  poet's  grave  and  monument, 
and  presented  his  readers  with  a  sketch,  more 
imaginary  than  accurate,  of  the  "  Stratford  monu- 
ment "  mentioned  by  Digges. 

But,  and  this  is  the  significant  fact,  Dugdale 
made  no  reference  to  the  house  in  which  the  poet 
was  born.  He  visited  the  town  three  years 
before  his  book  was  published — that  is,  in  1653 — 

5 


% 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

and  at  that  time,  only  thirty-seven  years  after 
Shakespeare  died,  there  were  of  course  many 
Stratfordians  who  could  have  pointed  out  the 
dramatist's  birthplace.  Perhaps,  however,  the 
antiquary  was  not  interested  in  such  matters,  and 
that  indifFerence  seems  to  have  been  shared  by 
many  subsequent  visitors.  In  fact,  a  diligent 
examination  of  old  records,  printed  and  in 
manuscript,  yields  the  result  that  all  through  the 
seventeenth  century  there  is  no  reference  to  any 
one  specific  building  as  the  actual  birthplace  of 
Shakespeare.  Indeed,  one  traveller  of  the  late 
seventeenth  century  wrote  up  his  diary  without 
mentioning  Shakespeare  at  all.  Stratford,  he 
noted,  was  "  well  built,  with  fair  streets  and  good 
inns,"  possessed  "  one  good  church  "  and  a  "  long 
and  well-built  bridge  "  ;  but  he  wrote  never  a 
word  about  its  most  famous  son.  And  that  was 
in  1682. 

Such  visitors,  however,  who  were  of  a  more 
literary  turn  of  mind  contented  themselves  for 
many  years  with  paying  their  devotion  at  the, 
poet's  grave.  Thus  a  diarist  namecTDowdall, 
who  passed  through  Stratford  in  1693,  confined 
6 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

his  record  to  the  church  and  grave ;  and  another 
pilgrim,  William  Hall  by  name,  who  visited  the 
town  the  following  year,  had  much  to  relate  of 
the  poet's  burial-place,  but,  like  Dowdall  and  the 
others,  made  no  reference  to  the  house  in  which 
he  was  bjojnw'  Even  Horace  Walpole,  who  did 
not  usually  overlook  much,  explored  Stratford 
in  the  summer  of  1 75 1  without  discovering  the 
birthplace.  Still  later,  indeed — that  is,  in  1760, 
and  only  nine  years  before  Garrick's  spectacular 
"Jubilee  " — a  noteworthy  visitor  was  wholly  silent 
as  to  the  dramatist's  natal  shrine. 

Yet  it  would  be  unjust  to  the  Mecca  in  Henley 
Street  not  to  admit  that  by  about  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century  it  had  begun  to  rival  the 
attraction  of  the  tomb  in  Holy  Trinity  Church, 
and  that  by  1769,  the  year  when  Garrick  exploited 
himself  at  Shakespeare's  expense,  the  cottage  was 
firmly  established  in  popular  favour  as  the 
veritable  scene  of  the  poet's  nativity.  How  the 
earlier  tradition  referred  to  above — that  which 
located  the  event  in  the  Brook  House  near  the 
river — was  supplanted  in  favour  of  Henley  Street 
is  a  mystery  which  will  probably  never  be  solved. 

7 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Unfortunately,  too,  the  perplexities  of  those 
who  do  not  wish  to  "worship  shadows  and  adore 
false  shapes  "  are  not  exhausted  by  the  rival  claims 
of  the  Brook  House  and  Henley  Street.  There 
are  problems  native  to  Henley  Street  qua  Henley 
Street.  When  Nathan  Drake,  in  1817,  made  the 
confident  assertion  that  "  the  very  roof  that 
sheltered  Shakespeare's  infant  innocency  can  still 
be  pointed  out,"  he  postulated  a  credulity  which 
is  no  longer  possible.  Waiving  for  the  moment 
the  question  as  to  whether  Henley  Street  is  the 
correct  locality,  it  is  indubitable  that  while  some 
of  the  timber  framework  and  fragments  of  the 
plaster  of  the  birthplace  may  have  survived  from 
the  second  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  the 
actual  roof  of  John  Shakespeare's  house  dis- 
appeared many  years  ago.  No  other  conclusion 
is  possible  from  the  various  drawings  which  were 
made  of  the  building  from  1762  onward. 

Several  stages  in  the  history  of  the  appearance 
of  the  birthplace  are  illustrated  by  drawings 
exhibited  in  one  of  the  rooms  of  that  building. 
The  earliest  of  these  is  a  pencil  sketch  made  in 
1788,  which  was  founded  on  a  drawing  executed 
8 


THE    BIRTHPLACE 

in  1769.  Both  these  bear  a  strong  likeness  to  the 
picture  of  1762  which  Mr.  Halliwell-Phillipps 
reproduced  in  one  of  his  books.  In  fact,  all  the 
oldest  illustrations  have  several  features  in 
common.  They  show  a  modest  building  consist- 
ing of  two  houses,  each  having  its  own  doorway, 
but  the  structure  on  the  east  is  distinguished  from 
that  on  the  west  by  having  two  gables  to  its 
companion's  one.  And  the  western  cottage  has 
a  penthouse  over  its  doorway  as  compared  with 
the  unsheltered  entrance  of  the  other.  In  each 
the  surface  of  the  wall  is  broken  up  with  those 
massive  beams  of  timber  which  were  so  picturesque 
a  feature  of  houses  built  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
It  should  be  added  that  the  right-hand  upstair 
window  of  the  eastern  house  was  in  the  form  of  a 
projecting  bay. 

When,  however,  the  drawings  made  in  the 
early  nineteenth  century  are  examined  it  will  be 
observed  that  the  most  notable  features  of  the 
eighteenth-century  pictures  have  disappeared. 
The  penthouse  of  the  western  house  has  given 
place  to  two  projecting  windows,  while  the  bay  of 
the  eastern  cottage  has  become  a  flat  window  of 

9 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

four  lights.  By  1849,  too,  in  the  unerring 
testimony  of  a  photograph,  other  changes  had 
taken  place,  including  the  bricking  over  of  a  part 
of  the  front  wall.  In  all  these  later  illustrations, 
moreover,  the  most  striking  difference  is  the 
aspect  presented  by  the  roof,  for  the  three  gables 
of  the  two  houses  have  been  entirely  demolished. 
An  ingenious  attempt  has  been  made  to  explain 
this  transformation  as  having  been  caused  by  the 
window  tax,  but  such  a  theory  ignores  the  fact 
that  the  window  tax  was  first  imposed  in  1697, 
and  that  it  was  only  levied  on  houses  having  more 
than  six  windows.  The  more  probable  explanation 
of  the  alterations  in  the  outward  appearance  of 
the  birthplace  is  that  they  were  rendered  necessary 
as  repairs  to  the  original  structure.  When  the 
structure  was  restored  it  was  natural  that  the 
architect  and  builder  should  closely  follow  the 
oldest  drawings,  and  hence  its  aspect  to-day  is  a 
trim  replica  of  the  sketches  of  the  second  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century. 

Having  disentangled  the  history  of  the  objective 
aspect  of  the  birthplace,  the  labours  of  the  seeker 
after  truth  are  by  no  means  at  an  end.  There 
10 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

remains  the  vital  question  of  deciding  in  which 
of  the  rooms  Shakespeare  was  born.  If  one 
could  accept  the  confident  statement  of  the  official 
leaflet,  that  question  would  be  answered  as  soon 
as  asked.  But  that  is  impossible.  One  reason  is 
provided  by  the  itinerary  of  a  Rev.  R.  Warner 
who  visited  Stratford  in  1801.  "On  inquiring 
for  the  birthplace  of  our  great  poet,"  he  wrote, 
"  we  were  not  a  little  surprised  to  be  carried 
through  a  small  butcher's  shop  into  a  dirty  back 
room."  And  yet  it  is  a  front  room  upstairs 
which  is  shown  as  the  actual  birth-chamber  ! 

Nor  does  that  exhaust  the  mystery.  While 
it  seems  probable  that  the  "  dirty  back  room  " 
into  which  Mr.  Warner  was  shown  was  situated 
in  the  western  half  of  the  birthplace,  and  while 
the  upstairs  front  room  which  is  now  pointed  out 
as  the  scene  of  the  poet's  nativity  is  in  the  same 
portion,  there  can  be  no  question  that  if  Shake- 
speare was  born  in  either  of  the  Henley  Street 
cottages  he  was  born  in  a  room  of  the  eastern  and 
not  the  western  building.  It  is  nothing  to  the 
purpose  that  the  walls  of  the  alleged  birth-room 
are    covered    with    the    autographs  of    credulous 

11 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

pilgrims  ;  they  were  all  inscribed  prior  to  the 
discovery  of  those  documents  which  have  thrown 
light  on  John  Shakespeare's  connexion  with  the 
two  Henley  Street  houses. 

f*  What,  then,  are  the  facts  ?  Briefly,  that  while 
John  Shakespeare  became  the  owner  of  the  eastern 
cottage  in  1556,  it  was  not  until  1575  that  he 
obtained  possession  of  the  western  building.  That 
1  is  to  say,  William  Shakespeare  was  eleven  years 
old  before  his  father  owned  or  occupied  the  build- 
ing in  which  his  birth-room  is  so  confidently 
located  ! 

When  Washington  Irving  paid  his  first  visit  to 
Stratford  in  181 5  he  was  in  no  such  critical  mood 
as  is  common  with  the  pilgrim  of  the  twentieth 
century.  "  I  am  always,"  he  confessed,  "  of  easy 
faith  in  such  matters,  and  am  willing  to  be 
deceived,  where  the  deceit  is  pleasant  and  costs 
nothing.  I  am  therefore  a  ready  believer  in 
relics,  legends,  and  local  anecdotes  of  goblins  and 
great  men ;  and  would  advise  all  travellers  who 
travel  for  their  gratification  to  be  the  same. 
What  is  it  to  us  whether  these  stories  be  true  or 
false,  so  long  as  we  can  persuade  ourselves  into  the 
12 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

belief  of  them,  and  enjoy  all  the  charm  of  the 
reality  ?  There  is  nothing  like  resolute  good- 
humoured  credulity  in  these  matters."  Easy 
faith  of  a  bygone  day  !  But  the  scientific  historian 
has  rendered  such  confidence  impossible. 

Then  the  sum  of  the  matter  is  this.  Bearing 
in  mind  the  priority  of  the  Brook  House  legend, 
and  remembering  that  John  Shakespeare's  purchase 
of  the  eastern  cottage  in  Henley  Street  does  not 
necessarily  imply  that  he  required  it  for  a  resi- 
dence, it  is  feasible  that  the  birth  of  William 
Shakespeare  in  April  1564  took  place  in  that  long- 
demolished  cottage  near  the  river,  for  in  such 
a  country  town  as  Stratford  an  early  tradition 
out-values  a  volume  of  learned  speculation.  If  an 
explanation  is  asked  as  to  how  it  came  to  pass 
that  the  Henley  Street  building,  and  above  all  the 
western  portion  of  that  structure,  has  been  since 
1759  known  as  the  poet's  birthplace,  Sir  Sidney 
Lee  supplies  the  answer.  "The  fact  of  its  long 
occupancy  by  the  poet's  collateral  descendants 
accounts  for  the  identification  of  the  western 
rather  than  the  eastern  tenement  with  his 
birthplace." 

13 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

But  are  not  all  these  cold  facts  fatal  to  the 
ardour  of  hero-worship  ?  By  no  means.  /If  ItT 
were  definitely  proved  that  not  even  the  eastern 
cottage  in  Henley  Street  has  any  claim  to  being 
the  birthplace  of  the  dramatist,  nothing  can  rob 
it  and  its  companion  of  the  distinction  which  J 
attaches  to  both  buildings  as  having  been  the 
childhood  home  of  Shakespeare.  Here,  then,  by 
the  time  the  future  poet  had  attained  his  eleventh 
year,  the  family  home  was  located,  and  it  is 
probable  that  thenceforward  William  Shake- 
speare knew  no  other  abode  in  Stratford  until  he 
left  his  native  town  for  that  adventure  in  London 
which  was  to  have  such  momentous  results. 

John  Shakespeare's  purchase  in  1575  of  the 
western  cottage  in  Henley  Street  seems  to  have 
marked  the  zenith  of  his  fortunes.  Up  to  that 
year  he  had  been  eminently  successful  in  the 
practical  affairs  of  life.  A  native  of  the  adjacent 
village  of  Snitterfield,  where  his  father  was  a 
farmer  in  easy  circumstances,  John  Shakespeare 
appears  to  have  removed  to  Stratford  about  1551 
and  set  up  in  business  as  a  general  dealer  in 
agricultural  products.  He  has  been  described  as 
14 


THE   "BIRTHPLACE 

a  butcher,  a  glover,  a  husbandman,  a  corn-dealer, 
a  wool  merchant,  and  so  on,  but  such  occupations 
must    not    be    regarded    as    contradictory    or    as 
exclusive  of  each  other.     To  the  present  day  the 
general  store  of  rural  England  is  an  emporium  of 
bewildering    resource,    and    hence  it    is  not  sur- 
prising that  a  tradesman  of  the  sixteenth  century 
should  have  dealt  in  so  many  articles  as  were  pur- 
veyed by  John  Shakespeare.    That  in  the  sum  total 
of  his  various  occupations  the  father  of  the  poet 
reaped  substantial  profit  may  be  inferred  from  the 
fact   that  in  1556  he  is  found  purchasing  some 
real    estate,   and    the    following   year    effected    a 
marriage   with   Mary   Arden,   the   daughter  of  a 
prosperous    farmer     of    Wilmcote.     From     the 
latter    date,  too,  he  began  to  take  a   prominent 
position  in  the  life  of  Stratford,  for  in    1557  he 
was  appointed  one  of  the  four  ale-tasters  of  the 
town,  men  whose  duty  it  was  to  sample  the  wares 
of  the  local  brewers  and  see  that  the  ale  and  beer 
were  alike  good,  wholesome,  and    reasonable  in 
price.     John  Shakespeare  evidently  approved  him- 
self a  competent  assayer  of  malt  liquors,  for  in 
the  following  year  he  was  chosen  one  of  the  four 

J5 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

petty  constables  of  the  town,  and  thus  was  clothed 
with  still  larger  authority  over  the  daily  life  of 
Stratfordians.  During  the  next  decade,  too,  he 
was  elected  to  four  other  municipal  offices  of 
increasing  importance,  one  of  which,  that  of 
chamberlain  or  treasurer,  he  filled  for  two  terms. 
His  crowning  honour  as  a  townsman  came  in 
1568,  when  he  was  voted  to  the  position  of  high 
bailiff — that  is,  mayor — of  Stratford. 

Four  years  earlier — that  is,  in  the  month  of 
April  1564 — there  had  been  born  to  him  that  son 
William  who  was  to  make  the  name  of  Shakespeare 
illustrious  in  the  literary  annals  of  the  world.  The 
actual  date  of  his  birth  is  not  known.  Such  an 
assertion  may  surprise  those  who  rely  upon  calen- 
dars and  the  confident  statements  of  biographical 
dictionaries,  in  which  April  23  is  cited  as  the 
birthday.  But  that  date  rests  solely  upon 
inference  and  tradition.  The  inference  is  deduced 
from  the  record  of  the  poet's  baptism  on  April  26 
in  the  register  of  Holy  Trinity  Church.  It  was 
customary,  so  the  theorists  argue,  to  baptize 
a  child  on  the  third  day  after  its  birth,  and  hence, 
as  Shakespeare  was  baptized  on  April  26,  he  must 
16 


THE   "BIRTHPLACE 

have  been  born  on  the  23rd.  Perhaps  in  the 
average  baptisms  may  have  followed  births  at  a 
three  days'  interval ;  but,  as  countless  exceptions 
could  be  cited,  and  as  there  was  no  secular  or 
ecclesiastical  law  on  the  subject,  the  inference  in 
Shakespeare's  case  is  not  valid.  He  may  have 
been  a  weakling  like  Addison,  who,  on  that 
account,  was  baptized  on  the  actual  day  of  his 
birth,  or  circumstances  may  have  delayed  his 
baptism  a  week  or  even  ten  days.  But  the 
theorists  support  their  case  by  legend  as  well  as 
by  inference.  It  is  established,  they  claim,  that 
Shakespeare  died  on  April  23,  and  that  it  was  an 
early  tradition  that  he  passed  away  on  his  birth- 
day. The  claim  may  be  allowed;  he  did  die  on 
April  23  ;  but  the  tradition  as  to  the  coincidence 
has  no  more  value  than  any  of  the  many  other 
legends  associated  with  Shakespeare's  name. 

If  inference  is  to  have  any  weight,  De  Quincey's 
theory  in  favour  of  April  22  as  the  actual  birth- 
day has  most  in  its  favour,  "Shakespeare's  sole 
granddaughter,  Lady  Barnard,  was  married  on 
April  22,  1626,  ten  years  exactly  after  the  poet's 
death  ;    and    the    reason    for    choosing    this    day 

b  17 


SHzAKESPEiARE  ^4ND   STRATFORD 

might  have  had  a  reference  to  her  illustrious 
grandfather's  birthday,  which,  there  is  good 
reason  for  thinking,  would  be  celebrated  as  a 
festival  in  the  family  for  generations.  Still,  this 
choice  may  have  been  an  accident,  or  governed 
merely  by  reason  of  convenience."  In  the  end 
De  Quincey  grew  out  of  favour  with  his  own 
theory,  and  advised  acquiescence  in  the  legendary 
April  23,  with  the  reservation  that  we  cannot  do 
wrong  if  we  drink  to  the  poet's  memory  on  both 
days. 

Wherever  John  Shakespeare  was  residing  during 
the  year  he  was  high  bailiff  of  Stratford,  his  term 
of  office  was  marked  by  an  event  which  must  have 
impressed  the  imagination  of  his  son  William. 
For,  suggestively  enough,/ John  Shakespeare's  I 
occupancy  of  the  post  of  high  bailiff  coincided 
with  the  two  earliest  visits  of  strolling  players  of 
which  there  is  any  record  in  the  annals  of  the 
town.  His  term  of  office  began  in  the  September 
of  1568  and  terminated  in  the  same  month  of  the 
following  year,  and  it  is  written  in  the  accounts 
of  Stratford  that  in  1569  the  "  Quene's  players" 
were  awarded  a  sum  of  nine  shillings  and  the 
18 


L 


THE   "BIRTHPLACE 

"Erie  of  Worcester's  pleers  "  the  sum  of  twelve 
pence./'  When  read  in  the  light  of  the  manners  of 
the  times  these  entries  are  full  of  interest.  They 
postulate,  for  one  thing,  a  keen  interest  in  the 
drama  in  John  Shakespeare,  for  the  strolling 
players  of  those  days  could  not  act  in  a  town 
without  the  permission  of  the  mayor,  and  it  was 
to  him  they  looked  for  the  remuneration  of  their 
first  performance.  The  first  performance,  then, 
was  known  as  the  Mayor's  play,  and  he,  as  the 
chief  patron,  would  see  to  it  that  the  members  of 
his  family  and  his  own  special  friends  were  not 
the  least  favoured  among  the  spectators. 

On  two  different  occasions,  then,  in  1569  the 
Queen's  players  and  the  Earl  of  Worcester's 
players  set  up  their  stage  in  Stratford  town,  and 
it  is  not  carrying  probability  far  to  conclude  that 
on  each  occasion  the  audiences  included  the  lad 
who  was  destined  to  become  the  chief  glory  of 
the  English  drama.  It  is  true  he  was  only 
in  his  sixth  year  at  the  time,  but  that  that  was  not 
too  tender  an  age  for  a  playgoer  in  the  sixteenth 
century  is  proved  by  the  parallel  case,  cited  by 
Mr.  Halliwell-Phillipps,  of  the  six-year-old  son  of 

l9 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

the  mayor  of  Gloucester,  who  stood  between  his 
father's  knees  and  "  saw  and  heard  very  well ' 
while  a  company  of  strolling  players  performed 
"  The  Cradle  of  Security."  How  moving  an 
event  a  child's  first  experience  of  a  theatrical 
performance  may  be  has  been  described  once 
for  all  by  Charles  Lamb,  and  what  was  true  of 
his  own  emotions  on  such  an  occasion  was  doubt- 
less anticipated  in  the  case  of  the  youthful 
Shakespeare. 

But  to  return  to  the  two  cottages  in  Henley 
Street.  Whatever  may  have  been  John  Shake- 
speare's connexion  with  the  eastern  tenement  prior 
to  1575,  it  is  beyond  question  that  from  that 
year  he  was  the  owner  and  occupier  of  both 
buildings.  And  it  is  also  a  fact  that  the  two 
structures  remained  in  the  possession  of  his 
descendants  until  1806. 

Why  John  Shakespeare  needed  both  cottages  is 
explained  partly  by  his  multifarious  occupations 
and  partly  by  the  ample  proportions  of  his  family. 
According  to  the  present  ground  plan,  the  com- 
bined buildings  contained  twelve  rooms,  but  it  is 
probable  that  the  annex  to  the  rear  of  the  western 
20 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

cottage  was  in  the  poet's  time  a  mere  lean-to  of 
inconsiderable  accommodation.     If  that  were  the 
case,  the  rooms  were  but  eight  in  number,  and  of 
those  the  two  on  the  ground  floor  of  the  eastern 
tenement  seem  to  have  been  used  for  commercial 
purposes,    leaving    six   apartments  for  domestic 
use.       Then,    as    now,    there   was    doubtless    an 
interior  communication  between  the  two  houses, 
but  it  seems  probable  that  within  a  few  years  after 
John   Shakespeare's  death   in    1601    the  interior 
doorway  was  built  up  so  that  the  houses  might  be 
once  more  occupied  as  separate  dwellings.     And 
it  was  in  the  western  portion  the  descendants  of 
John  Shakespeare  lived  for  the  long  period  noted 
above,  the  eastern  cottage  being  let  for  various 
purposes    and.    finally    transformed    into    an    inn 
known  as  the  Maidenhead,  then  as  the  Swan  and 
Maidenhead,  and  latterly  as  the  Swan.      During 
the    eighteenth   century   the   front   room   of  the 
western  cottage  was  turned  into  a  butcher's  shop, 
and  it  still  retained  traces  of  such  an  establish- 
ment when  visited  by  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  about 
the  middle  of  the  last  century. 

As  has  been  shown  above,  up  to  the  middle  of 

21 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

the  eighteenth  century  none  of  the  pilgrims  to 
Stratford  seem  to  have  been  curious  about  the 
poet's  birthplace.  For  nearly  a  century  and  a 
half,  then,  its  whereabouts  and  identity  were 
treated  with  indifference.  Then  came  a  change, 
the  chief  cause  of  which  must  be  sought  in 
that  over-decorated  festival  known  as  Garrick's 
"  Shakespearean  Jubilee."  As  the  year  of  that 
three  days'  celebration  was  1769,  the  use  of  the 
word  "jubilee"  was  a  misnomer,  for  it  did  not 
coincide  with  either  the  birth  or  death  year  of  the 
dramatist.  And  the  whole  affair  had  so  many 
ridiculous  features  that  Samuel  Foote,  who  did 
not  love  Garrick,  had  an  easy  task  in  satirizing 
its  principal  events.  "A  jubilee,"  he  wrote,  "as 
it  hath  lately  appeared,  is  a  public  invitation, 
circulated  and  urged  by  puffing,  to  go  post  with- 
out horses,  to  an  obscure  borough  without  repre- 
sentatives, governed  by  a  mayor  and  aldermen 
who  are  no  magistrates,  to  celebrate  a  great  poet, 
whose  own  works  have  made  him  immortal,  by 
an  ode  without  poetry,  music  without  melody, 
dinners  without  victuals,  and  lodgings  without 
beds ;  a  masquerade  where  half  the  people  appeared 
22 


THE   "BIRTHPLACE 

barefaced,  a  horse-race  up  to  the  knees  in  water, 
fireworks  extinguished  as  soon  as  they  were 
lighted,  a  gingerbread  amphitheatre,  which,  like  a 
house  of  cards,  tumbled  to  pieces  as  soon  as  it  was 
finished." 

Foote's  reference  to  Stratford  as  "  an  obscure 
borough  "  was  hardly  more  uncomplimentary  than 
Garrick's  description  of  it  as  "  the  most  dirty, 
unseemly,  ill-pav'd,  wretched-looking  town  in  all 
Britain,"  a  verdict  which  was  a  replica  of  Horace 
Walpole's  opinion,  penned  eighteen  years  earlier, 
to  the  effect  that  it  was  the  "  wretchedest  old 
town "  he  had  ever  seen.  Garrick,  however, 
reserved  his  opprobrium  for  a  private  letter ;  in 
his  public  character  as  the  laureate  of  the 
"Jubilee"  he  was  prolific  of  adulatory  adjectives. 
And  yet  even  in  his  "  Ode  "  he  made  no  reference 
to  the  birthplace  cottages.  But  they  were  not 
neglected,  for  the  records  of  the  time  tell  how  the 
humble  buildings  in  Henley  Street  were  adorned 
with  a  huge  emblematic  transparency. 

If  there  is  one  day  in  the  early  history  of  those 
cottages  which  should  be  marked  with  a  red 
letter  it  is  the  day  when  they  were  muffled  in  the 

23 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

gorgeous  transparency  of  the  Garrick  "Jubilee." 
That  distinction  established  a  precedent  which 
with  every  passing  year  would  tend  to  the  oblitera- 
tion of  the  Brook  House  tradition,  and  con- 
sequently, if  there  is  an  explanation  of  how 
Henley  Street  usurped  the  Brook  House,  it  must 
be  sought  in  the  "  Jubilee  "  festivities  of  1769. 

Some  years,  then,  before  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century  the  western  cottage  was 
accepted  as  the  natal  shrine  of  Shakespeare, 
and  by  the  opening  years  of  the  following  century 
it  was  visited  by  the  forerunners  of  that  band 
of  pilgrims  which  has  now  swollen  to  an  annual 
army  of  some  forty  thousand.  The  first  care- 
taker or  cicerone  of  whom  there  is  any  record  was 
that  poetical  widow,  Mary  Hornby  by  name,  who 
did  the  honours  of  the  cottage  to  Washington 
Irving.  When  he  was  shown  over  the  house  Mrs. 
Hornby  had  had  twenty-two  years'  experience  in 
entertaining  credulous  devotees,  and  had  grown, 
as  Irving  noted,  somewhat  "  garrulous."  His 
picture  of  the  widow  is  more  vivid  than  the  sil- 
houette which  now  hangs  in  the  house  she  exploited 
for  twenty-seven  years.  "  A  garrulous  old  lady 
24 


1 


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a 
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a. 


to 

a 
as 
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a 
a. 

a 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

Irving  wrote,  "  in  a  frosty  red  face,  lighted  up 
by  a  cold  blue  anxious  eye,  and  garnished  with 
artificial  locks  of  flaxen  hair,  curling  from  under 
an  exceedingly  dirty  cap.  She  was  peculiarly 
assiduous,"  he  continued,  "  in  exhibiting  the  relics 
with  which  this,  like  all  other  celebrated  shrines, 
abounds.  There  was  the  shattered  stock  of  the 
very  matchlock  with  which  Shakespeare  shot  the 
deer  on  his  poaching  exploits.  There,  too,  was 
his  tobacco-box,  which  proves  that  he  was  a  rival 
smoker  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  ;  the  sword  also  with 
which  he  played  Hamlet ;  and  the  identical  lantern 
with  which  Friar  Laurence  discovered  Romeo  and 
Juliet  at  the  tomb  !  There  was  an  ample  supply 
also  of  Shakespeare's  mulberry-tree,  which  seems 
to  have  as  extraordinary  powers  of  self-multiplica- 
tion as  the  wood  of  the  true  Cross."  Such  were 
some  of  the  relics ;  as  to  the  building  in  which 
they  were  treasured  the  author  of  "  The  Sketch- 
Book  "  noted  that  it  was  "  a  small,  mean-looking 
edifice  of  wood  and  plaster." 

Washington  Irving  was  not  the  first  American 
to  make  a  "  poetical  pilgrimage "  to  that  un- 
pretentious house.     Three  years  earlier,  namely, 

25 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

in  1 8 12,  he  had  been  anticipated  by  a  fellow- 
countryman  named  Perkins,  who  had  signalized 
his  pilgrimage  by  presenting  Mrs.  Hornby  with  an 
album  for  the  recording  of  visitors' names.  That 
seems  to  have  been  the  first  visitors'  book  kept 
at  the  birthplace,  and  when  its  pages  were  filled 
it  was  succeeded  by  others,  for  at  the  sale  of 
the  property  in  1847  ^ve  such  volumes  were 
bought  by  one  bidder  for  the  sum  of  seventy 
guineas. 

Mr.  Perkins's  gift  had  a  result  which  he  little 
anticipated.  That  visitors'  book  inspired  Mary 
Hornby  with  poetic  ambitions.  Irving,  it  will 
be  remembered,  in  his  good-humoured  credulity, 
went  so  far  as  to  accept  the  claims  of  his  cicerone 
to  a  lineal  descent  from  Shakespeare,  when, 
luckily  for  his  faith,  she  handed  him  a  play  of  her 
own  composition,  "  which  set  all  belief  in  her 
consanguinity  at  defiance."  But  Mrs.  Hornby 
had  begun  her  poetic  career  on  a  less  ambitious 
scale.  Observing  that  many  who  inscribed  the 
visitors'  book  were  impelled  to  express  their 
emotions  in  the  form  of  verse,  she  was  prompted 
to  emulate  their  example,  and  for  result  was  duly 
26 


THE  BIRTHPLACE 

delivered  of  the  following  "  Invitation  to  Shake- 
speare's  Spring  "  : 

"  Come,  drink  of  the  fountain  where  Shakespeare  was 

horn, 
hike    me   shed  a   tear  that  from  earth    he    was 

torn, 
Yet    his    name    zvill   outlive    all   the   tyrants    of 

earth, 
All  -princes  and  heroes  that  ever  had  birth, 
For  tyrants  and  princes  and  heroes  at  best 
By  man  are  evaded,  by  man  are  oppressed  ; 
With  them  nature' 's  beauties  incessant  are  marr'd — 
While  the  poet  loves  nature,  "'tis   God  makes   the 

bard." 

In  justification  of  the  poetic  widow  it  should  be 
recorded  that  her  wretched  doggerel  was  not  out 
of  place  in  the  visitors'  book.  None  of  the 
early  nineteenth-century  pilgrims  were  dis- 
tinguished for  poetic  inspiration,  and  hence  the 
little  volume  which  Mrs.  Hornby  compiled  from 
their  and  her  own  effusions,  and  published  in  1 8 17 
at  a  shilling  a  copy,  is  not  exactly  a  treasure-house 

27 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

of  immortal  verse,  even  though  some  of  the  lines 
were,  on  the  authority  of  her  title-page,  written 
by  "  people  of  Genius." 

But  the  chief  interest  of  that  collection  of 
"Extemporary  Verse  "  is  that  it  bears  witness  to 
the  result  of  Washington  Irving's  visit  to  Henley 
Street.  Shakespeare's  town  owes  a  large  debt  to 
the  American  essayist,  for  his  graceful  sketch 
of  Stratford-on-Avon  gave  an  immense  impetus  to 
the  pilgrim  traffic  and  is  to  this  day  the  inspiration 
of  countless  visitors.  Little  did  Mrs.  Hornby 
realize  that  the  caller  to  whom  she  confided  her 
belief  in  her  Shakespearean  ancestry  was  to  be 
the  inadvertent  cause  of  her  losing  her  profitable 
post  as  cicerone  of  the  birthplace,  and  yet  no 
other  conclusion  is  possible  from  the  plaintive 
prose  note  she  inserted  in  that  book  of  "Ex- 
temporary Verses."  It  was  a  breathless  note, 
devoid  of  any  punctuation,  and  read  thus:  "If  I 
Mary  Hornby  widow  should  be  obliged  to  quit 
this  house  in  a  short  time  it  is  my  intention  to 
take  the  relics  that  remain  belonging  to  the 
immortal  Shakespeare  to  the  nearest  house  I  can 
get  for  the  amusement  of  those  Ladies  and  Gentle- 
28 


THE    "BIRTHPLACE 

men    that    shall  please  to  favour  me  with  their 
company." 

What  had  happened  ?  Briefly,  another  case  of 
the  unearned  increment  of  genius.  The  birthplace 
had  been  "  discovered."  Thanks  to  Washington 
Irving  and  other  causes,  the  pilgrims  to  Shake- 
speare's shrine  constantly  increased  in  numbers. 
All  this  was  to  the  pecuniary  profit  of  widow 
Hornby  ;  she  not  only  had  more  purchasers  of  her 
"works" — the  "ExtemporaryVerses,""The  Battle 
of  Waterloo,"  and  "  The  Broken  Vow  " — but  the 
"  tips  "  of  the  devotees  represented  a  considerable 
revenue.  Now  it  was  unfortunate  for  the 
poetical  widow  that  she  was  not  the  owner  of 
that  lucrative  birthplace  ;  on  the  contrary,  she  was 
merely  a  tenant  paying  at  first  the  modest  rent  of 
ten  pounds  and  then  twenty  pounds  a  year.  What 
she  made  from  the  donations  of  the  pilgrims  she 
declined  to  disclose ;  but  the  owner  of  the  cottage 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  twenty  pounds  a 
year  was  too  small  a  proportion  for  her  share  and 
announced  her  intention  of  raising  the  rent  to 
forty  pounds.  This  was  the  juncture  at  which 
the     cicerone    penned    that    comma-less    notice 

29 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

quoted  above.  The  relics  of  the  "immortal 
Shakespeare '  were  her  own  property,  and  she 
seems  to  have  entertained  the  notion  that 
without  them  the  birthplace  would  be  in  a  more 
desperate  case  than  "  Hamlet  "  without  the  Prince 
of  Denmark. 

Perhaps  she  was  right.  The  scientific  spirit 
had  not  been  born  in  those  days ;  it  is  quite 
probable  that  most  of  the  pilgrims  shared  Irving's 
"  easy  faith "  and  were  more  impressed  by  the 
relics  than  by  Shakespeare's  birth-chamber. 

Certainly  Mrs.  Hornby  had  gathered  together 
an  awe-inspiring  collection.  Irving's  inventory 
was  almost  criminally  meagre.  Happily  another 
visitor  was  more  copious,  even  if  not  exhaustive. 
In  1819,  then,  the  various  "  articles  of  Shake- 
speare's property  "  comprised  the  following  mis- 
cellaneous items : 

"  His  chair  in  the  chimney-corner  ;  the  match- 
lock with  which  he  shot  the  deer  ;  his  Toledo  and 
walking-stick,  which  seemed  of  vine,  and  was 
elegant  in  its  form  ;  a  small  bugle-horn  ;  his  read- 
ing glass ;  the  bench  and  table  near  his  bedside 
where  he  wrote  ;  the  glass  out  of  which  he  drank 
30 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

without  rising  in  his  bed  in  his  last  illness;  a  cup 
and  basin ;  his  christening  bowl ;  his  child's  chair ; 
a  superb  table-cover,  embroidered  in  gold,  given 
him  by  Queen  Elizabeth;  his  easy-chair;  his  bed 
complete ;  the  images  that  seem  to  have  been 
posts,  and  four  panels  of  a  triangular  form  which 
appear  to  have  made  a  half-tester,  though  no 
longer  part  of  the  bedstead ;  his  lantern  ;  his 
coffer,  with  some  money ;  his  pencil-case ;  his 
wife's  shoe ;  a  bolt  taken  from  the  door  of  the 
room ;  a  portrait  of  him  put  together  from 
fragments  by  Dr.  Stort,  Bishop  of  Killala." 

Such  was  the  inventory  made  in  1819  by  Miss 
Hawkins,  who,  with  the  curiosity  of  her  sex, 
cross-questioned  the  widow  Hornby  as  to  her 
income  from  the  donations  given  by  grateful 
pilgrims  for  the  sight  of  such  precious  relics. 
But,  as  hinted  above,  the  astute  cicerone  refused 
to  be  drawn  ;  the  question  of  increased  rent  for 
the  cottage  was  still  in  dispute,  and  she  may  have 
suspected  her  visitor  as  being  in  collusion  with  her 
exacting  landlady.  The  following  year,  however, 
the  landlady  did  finally  carry  into  effect  her 
threat  to  raise  the  rent  of  the  birthplace  to  forty 

3i 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

pounds  a  year,  with  the  result  that  Mrs.  Hornby 
gave  up  her  tenancy  and  carried  off  her  relics 
to  another  house  for  the  "amusement  of  those 
Ladies  and  Gentlemen "  who  took  pleasure  in 
such  souvenirs. 

As  already  stated,  the  Henley  Street  cottages 
remained  in  the  possession  of  descendants  of  the 
Shakespeare  family  until  1806,  in  which  year  they 
were  purchased  by  Thomas  Court.  When  he 
died  twelve  years  later  he  bequeathed  the  property 
to  his  wife,  and  hence  it  was  by  a  sister  widow 
that  Mrs.  Hornby  was  practically  driven  from  the 
custodianship  of  the  birthplace. 

From  1820,  then,  there  were  two  Richmonds 
in  the  field.  And  it  seems  probable  that  for 
several  years  the  widow  Court  had  good  reason 
to  regret  the  removal  of  widow  Hornby  and  her 
relics.  For  the  poetical  cicerone  had  rightly 
diagnosed  the  situation  ;  her  various  "  articles  of 
Shakespeare's  property  "  secured  her  a  liberal  share 
of  the  pilgrim  patronage,  and  to  make  matters 
worse  for  the  extortionate  widow  Court,  the  new 
custodian  of  the  birthplace  appears  to  have  sadly 
neglected  her  charge.  Hence  a  visitor  to  Stratford 
32 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

in  1824  described  the  Henley  Street  shrine  as 
"the  worst  house  in  the  town,"  which  would 
have  been  passed  by  in  disgust  had  it  not  been 
for  the  board  outside  bearing  the  legend,  "  The 
immortal  Shakespeare  was  born  here."  That 
same  visitor,  however,  bore  testimony  to  the 
increased  vogue  of  the  poet,  for  he  said  he  "  met 
Shakespeare  everywhere.  The  print  and  book 
shops  have  him  in  all  forms." 

Three  years  later  there  happened  an  event  which 
did  much  to  reinstate  the  birthplace  in  popular 
favour.     This  was  another  of  those  Shakespeare 
"Jubilees"    which    were    made    fashionable    by 
Garrick's  experiment,   and  once  more   the  term 
"jubilee"  was  a  misnomer,  for  the  date,   1827, 
did    not   correspond  to  either  the  natal  or  death 
year  of  the  poet.     Owing    its    initiation   to   the 
Shakespearean  Club  of  the  town,  the  festival  of 
April  23,  1827,  was  planned  on  a  gorgeous  scale, 
with    an    imposing   procession    of    Shakespeare 
characters    impersonated   by  the    members  of  a 
theatrical  company  which  was  playing  in  Stratford. 
Several    characters    from    fourteen  of  the  plays, 
numbering  upwards  of  forty  without  counting  the 

c  33 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

attendant  witches,  satyrs,  and'  fairies,  marched  in 
the  pageant,  with  Melpomene  at  the  head  of  the 
tragic  section  and  Thalia  leading  on  the  comedy 
troupe.  There  were  banners,  too,  and  bands,  and 
St.  George  on  horseback  in  armour,  and  a  brave 
array  of  the  Shakespearean  Club  members  marching 
four  abreast  and  liberally  decorated  with  medals 
struck  for  the  occasion.  A  glittering  cavalcade, 
indeed,  for  the  quiet  streets  of  Stratford,  which, 
after  perambulating  the  principal  thoroughfares, 
finally  halted  before  the  birthplace,  where  a 
hustings  had  been  erected  for  the  climax  of  the 
pageant,  the  crowning  of  a  bust  of  Shakespeare  by 
Melpomene  and  Thalia  to  the  accompaniment  of 
an  eloquent  oration.  Thenceforward  the  Henley 
Street  shrine  had  nothing  to  fear  from  the 
competition  of  widow  Hornby's  miscellaneous 
collection. 

But  for  many  years  it  was  an  exceedingly  bare 
shrine  in  which  the  pilgrims  paid  their  devotions. 
That  was  the  condition  in  which  Hawthorne 
found  it  in  the  early  years  of  the  second  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  He  reported  that  the 
birth-chamber  and  the  entire  house  were  white- 

34 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

washed  and  exceedingly  clean,  but  the  only  objects 
on  view  were  "  various  prints,  views  of  houses, 
and  scenes  connected  with  Shakespeare's  memory, 
together  with  editions  of  his  works  and  local 
publications  about  his  home  and  haunts." 
Hawthorne's  cicerone  was  a  worthy  successor  of 
the  widow  Hornby,  an  old  lady  with  the  "  manners 
and  aspect  of  a  gentlewoman,"  who  talked  with 
"somewhat  formidable  knowledge  and  appreciative 
intelligence  about  Shakespeare." 

As  compared  with  the  account  penned  by  his 
fellow-countryman,  Washington  Irving,  Haw- 
thorne's description  of  the  appearance  of  the 
birthplace  as  he  saw  it  about  1856  is  full  of 
minute  detail.  The  house  he  found  almost 
smaller  and  humbler  than  any  account  would 
prepare  the  visitor  to  expect,  while  the  basement 
apartment  still  preserved  the  butcher's  stall  with 
its  cleaver-hacked  counter.  "  This  lower  room," 
he  added,  "  has  a  pavement  of  grey  slabs  of  stone, 
which  may  have  been  rudely  squared  when  the 
house  was  new,  but  are  now  all  cracked,  broken, 
and  disarranged  in  a  most  unaccountable  way. 
One  does  not   see   how  any  ordinary   usage,  for 

35 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

whatever  length  of  time,  should  have  so  smashed 
these  heavy  stones  ;  it  is  as  if  an  earthquake  had 
burst  up  through  the  floor,which  afterwards  had 
been  imperfectly  trodden  down  again."  Ascend- 
ing to  the  upper  floor,  Hawthorne  was  ushered  into 
the  room  "  in  which  Shakespeare  is  supposed  to 
have  been  born  ;  though,  if  you  peep  too  curiously 
into  the  matter,  you  may  find  the  shadow  of  an 
ugly  doubt  on  this,  as  well  as  most  other  points 
of  his  mysterious  life.  It  is,"  he  continued,  "  the 
chamber  over  the  butcher's  shop,  and  is  lighted 
by  one  broad  window  containing  a  great  many 
small,  irregular  panes  of  glass.  The  floor  is  made 
of  planks,  very  rudely  hewn,  and  fitting  together 
with  little  neatness ;  the  naked  beams  and  rafters, 
at  the  sides  of  the  room  and  overhead,  bear  the 
original  marks  of  the  builder's  broad-axe,  with  no 
evidence  of  an  attempt  to  smooth  off  the  job. 
Again  we  have  to  reconcile  ourselves  to  the 
smallness  of  the  space  enclosed  by  these  illustrious 
walls — a  circumstance  more  difficult  to  accept,  as 
regards  places  that  we  have  heard,  read,  thought, 
and  dreamed  much  about,  than  any  other  dis- 
enchanting particular  of  a  mistaken  ideal.     A  few 

36 


THE  BIRTHPLACE 

paces — perhaps  seven  or  eight — take  us  from  end 
to  end  of  it.  So  low  is  it  that  I  could  easily 
touch  the  ceiling,  and  might  have  done  so  with- 
out a  tiptoe-stretch,  had  it  been  a  good  deal 
higher  ;  and  this  humility  of  the  chamber  has 
tempted  a  vast  number  of  people  to  write  their 
names  overhead  in  pencil.  Every  inch  of  the 
side  walls,  even  into  the  obscurest  nooks  and 
corners,  is  covered  with  a  similar  record  ;  all  the 
window-panes,  moreover,  are  scrawled  with 
diamond  signatures,  among  which  is  said  to  be 
that  of  Walter  Scott ;  but  so  many  persons  have 
sought  to  immortalize  themselves  in  close  vicinity 
to  his  name  that  I  really  could  not  trace  him 
out." 

Between  the  "  Jubilee  "  of  1827  and  the  visit  of 
Hawthorne  some  twenty-nine  years  later  an  im- 
portant event  had  transpired  in  the  history  of  the 
Henley  Street  cottages.  The  widow  Court  died 
in  1846,  and  the  question  of  the  future  ownership 
of  the  premises  at  once  began  to  engage  public 
attention. 

This  was  the  juncture  at  which  the  fortunes  of 
the  birthplace  were  threatened  by  the  ubiquitous 

37 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Phineas  T.  Barnum.  That  enterprising  American 
showman  crops  up  in  the  legends  of  most  historic 
buildings  in  England.  He  is  credited  with  a 
desire  to  buy  them  all  at  some  time  or  other,  with 
the  sinister  purpose  of  transplanting  them  bodily 
to  United  States  soil.  That  he  had  designs  upon 
the  famous  shrine  at  Stratford  seems  beyond 
dispute  ;  it  would  have  been  the  greatest  "  scoop  ': 
of  his  spectacular  career  if  he  could  have  secured 
possession  of  the  Shakespeare  house  and  trans- 
planted it  to  America.  And  there  were  some  who 
credited  him  with  the  actual  achievement  of  that 
fact,  for  some  twenty  years  ago  it  was  confidently 
affirmed  that  the  birthplace  had  been  removed  and 
was  then  "  somewhere  in  the  United  States  of 
America." 

But  that  was  an  assertion  founded  on  inadequate 
knowledge.  The  "  somewhere  "  proved  its  falsity. 
Barnum  was  not  the  man  to  hide  such  an  acquisi- 
tion under  a  bushel.  And  as  so  many  erroneous 
statements  have  been  made  concerning  the  last 
purchase  of  the  Henley  Street  property,  it  may  be 
interesting  to  give  an  outline  of  the  true  history 
of  that  event. 

38 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

For  the  construction  of  such  a  history  there  are 
two  records  of  first-hand  value :  one  is  a  copy  of 
the  sale-book  used    by  the   auctioneer,  Edmund 
Robins,  on  the  day  when  the  property  was  dis- 
posed of,  with  an  interleaved  manuscript  draft  of 
his  speech  on  that  occasion  ;  the  other  the  detailed 
report  of  the  auction  which  was  printed  in  the 
Morning  Post  for  September   17,  1847.     A  com- 
parison of  these   records  with   the    innumerable 
accounts  hitherto  given  of  the  sale  of  the  birth- 
place shows  that,   as  in  so  many  other  matters, 
first-hand    information    has    been   strangely  neg- 
lected. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  heir  to  widow  Court's 
estate  at  her  death  in  1846  was  a  minor,  and  that 
his  trustee,  acting  under  legal  advice,  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  he  would  best  serve  the  interests  of 
his  ward  by  selling  the  property.  A  similar  trans- 
action had  been  carried  out  in  1806  without 
exciting  the  outside  world;  by  1846,  however,  the 
value  of  the  birthplace  as  a  literary  shrine  had 
been  materially  enhanced,  and  it  was  improbable 
that  it  would  change  owners  again  for  the  modest 
sum — £260 — which  Thomas  Court  invested  forty 

39 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

years  earlier.  No  sooner,  then,  was  it  rumoured 
that  the  Shakespeare  cottages  were  to  be  offered 
for  sale  than  a  committee  was  formed  with  the 
object  of  raising  a  fund  for  their  purchase  on  behalf 
of  the  nation.  To-day  such  a  committee  would 
have  an  easy  task ;  sixty-five  years  ago  it  was  not 
a  light  undertaking.  For  there  were  sceptics  in 
the  land  then,  obstinate  questioners  who  did  not 
share  the  "  easy  faith "  of  Washington  Irving. 
Consequently  when  a  member  of  the  London 
Court  of  Common  Council  proposed  that  that 
body  should  vote  a  sum  of  money  towards  the 
purchase  of  "Shakespeare's  House,"  the  reference 
of  the  seconder  of  the  motion  to  the  building  as 
"  the  house  in  which  he  was  born"  was  greeted 
with  an  emphatic  "  No,  no  !  "  and  the  proposal 
was  defeated  by  sixty-nine  votes  to  thirty- 
eight. 

On  that  very  day,  at  the  Mart  in  London,  the 
sale  of  the  property  was  completed.  It  had  been 
announced  to  take  place  at  "twelve  for  one 
precisely,"  but  a  few  minutes  after  eleven  o'clock 
the  Mart  doors  were  besieged  by  an  excited  crowd, 
and  at  noon  the  auction-room  was  packed  "  almost 
40 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

to  suffocation.  "  So  dense  was  the  crowd,  indeed, 
that  an  adjournment  had  to  be  made  to  a  larger 
hall,  where  Mr.  Robins  began  the  sale  at  "  one 
precisely."  His  opening  address  had  been  care- 
fully prepared  and  was  pitched  in  a  high  key 
appropriate  to  the  occasion.  The  interest  ex- 
cited by  the  event,  he  declared,  had  not  been 
equalled  in  the  annals  of  auctions,  and  he  claimed 
that  instead  of  the  contemplated  sale  being  made 
the  subject  of  reproach  it  was  a  matter  for  con- 
gratulation that  an  opportunity  was  being  openly 
afforded  for  the  acquisition  of  "  the  birthplace  of 
the  immortal  bard  "  by  the  nation.  Mr.  Robins 
further  protested  that  he  and  those  for  whom  he 
was  acting  were  determined  that  their  conduct 
in  such  an  important  transaction  should  be 
thoroughly  honourable  and  as  much  above 
suspicion  as  Caesar's  wife,  and  he  appealed  to  the 
Committee  to  meet  them  in  the  same  spirit.  "  As 
I  feel  it  my  duty,"  he  added,  "to  announce  that 
no  fictitious  bidding  whatever  will  be  made  by  the 
vendor  or  on  his  behalf,  still  I  claim  for  him  to 
make,  in  his  capacity  of  guardian,  one  bidding 
during  the  auction.     Should,  however,  the  Com- 

41 


SHiAKESPEzARE  *AND  STRATFORD 

mittee  by  their  agent  at  their  first  bidding,  which 
I  hope  they  will  do,  name  the  sum  they  are  dis- 
posed to  give  for  the  property,  and  should  it 
exceed  that  which  the  trustee  is  advised  to  bid,  I 
shall  at  once  state  the  fact  and  leave  the  matter  in 
the  hands  of  the  public." 

Having  thus  unburdened  himself  of  his  lofty- 
spirited  exordium,  Mr.  Robins  descended  to 
more  mercenary  matters.  Apart  from  its  asso- 
ciations with  Shakespeare,  the  property  was  of 
considerable  commercial  value  as  mere  buildings 
and  freehold  land ;  while  as  a  literary  shrine  its 
constantly  enhancing  value  was  demonstrated  by 
the  fact  that  the  yearly  total  of  visitors  was  ever 
on  the  increase.  Many  of  those  visitors  had 
"  paid  large  sums  for  the  privilege  of  sleeping  in 
the  room." 

Thus  far  Mr.  Robins  had  been  heard  with 
patience  and  interest ;  but  when  he  proceeded  to 
dwell  upon  the  authenticity  of  the  birth-room  and 
described  it  as  the  veritable  chamber  in  which  the 
illustrious  poet  "first  drew  the  breath  of  life"  his 
eloquence  was  rudely  interrupted.  In  the  words 
of  the  Morning  Post  reporter,  "an  individual 
42 


THE   "BIRTHPLACE 

wearing  a  very  formidable  pair  of  moustachios, 
and  whose  name  was  stated  to  be  Jones,  here 
called  upon  Mr.  Robins  to  prove  that  Shakespeare 
was  born  in  that  identical  room."  With  ready 
wit  the  auctioneer  retorted  that  such  a  demand 
reminded  him  of  the  story  of  the  person  who 
went  to  Stratford  to  see  the  midwife  who  officiated 
at  the  birth  of  the  poet,  and  the  rejoinder  so 
amused  the  audience  that  when  the  gentleman  in 
the  "  formidable  pair  of  moustachios "  made  a 
second  attempt  to  bring  Mr.  Robins  back  to  the 
point,  he  was  shouted  down  with  cries  of  "  To 
business !  " 

To  business,  accordingly,  the  auctioneer  pro- 
ceeded. And,  so  far  as  the  buildings  were 
concerned,  it  was  exhausted  in  three  bids.  The 
first  offer,  which  was  made  apparently  by  the 
trustee,  was  for  a  thousand  pounds  ;  the  second, 
tendered  by  a  Mr.  Butler,  was  for  double  that 
sum.  But  where  was  Barnum  ?  Was  Mr.  Butler 
acting  for  the  famous  showman,  or  was  he  present 
in  person  in  the  guise  of  the  individual  "whose 
name  was  stated  to  be  Jones"?  This  is  another 
Shakespearean    mystery    which    awaits    solution. 

43 


SHAKESPEARE   AND  STRATFORD 

In  any  case,  no  sooner  had  Mr.  Butler,  whether 
acting  for  himself  or  Barnum,  made  his  bid  of 
two  thousand  pounds  than  a  memorandum  was 
handed  to  Mr.  Robins  stating  that  the  Committee 
was  prepared  to  give  three  thousand  pounds  for 
the  property.  "Immense  cheers,"  recorded  the 
Morning  Post  reporter,  "  followed  the  reading  of 
this  document,  coupled  with  derisive  laughter  at 
the  expense  of  the  gentleman  in  moustachios,  who 
afterwards  offered  two  thousand  pounds."  With- 
out waiting  for  further  bids,  Mr.  Robins  clinched 
the  offer  of  the  Committee  with  the  fall  of  his 
hammer,  and  with  that  resounding  tap  on 
September  16,  1847,  tne  Henley  Street  home  of 
Shakespeare  passed  for  all  time  into  the  possession 
of  the  British  nation. 

Sixty-five  years,  then,  have  elapsed  since  the 
Stratford  shrine  became  national  property.  And 
if  Hawthorne  could  revisit  it  to-day  he  would 
have  much  difficulty  in  recognizing  in  the 
smoothly  restored  and  trimly  kept  building  the 
original  of  that  humble  edifice  which  he  described 
in  "Our  Old  Home,"  while  Washington  Irving 
would  utterly  fail  to  identify  it  with  the  "  mean- 

44 


THE   "BIRTHPLACE 

looking  "  cottage  of  his  pilgrimage,  and  the  diarist 
of  1824  could  no  longer  describe  it  as  "the  worst 
house  in  the  town."  What  is  true,  too,  of  the 
exterior  appearance  of  the  birthplace  may  also  be 
affirmed  of  the  interior.  The  various  rooms  are 
no  longer  "  squalid  "  or  merely  whitewashed  ;  and 
the  vacuity  noted  by  Hawthorne  has  given  place 
to  a  somewhat  bewildering  collection  of  objects 
which  are  aptly  characterized  as  "  miscellaneous  " 
by  Sir  Sidney  Lee. 

Unfortunately  few  of  those  three  hundred  and 
fifty  objects  have  more  than  an  allusive  connexion 
with  Shakespeare.  Although  the  present  trustees 
of  the  birthplace  exercise  considerable  discrimina- 
tion in  their  purchases  and  acceptance  of  additions, 
their  earliest  predecessors  were  little  disposed  to 
look  a  gift-horse  in  the  mouth.  Not  that  any 
relic  now  shown  makes  so  severe  a  strain  on 
credulity  as  some  of  the  objects  shown  by  the 
widow  Hornby,  such  as  the  poet's  christening 
bowl  or  his  wife's  shoe  ;  but  candour  prompts  the 
wish  that  the  trustees  were  less  confident  in  their 
official  ascriptions  of  some  of  their  treasures. 
There  is  that  ring,  for  example,  in  the  Museum 

45 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

which  is  catalogued  as  "  Shakespeare's  gold  finger- 
ring,"  but  of  which  the  most  that  can  be  said 
is  that  it  is  probably  a  gentleman's  ring  of  the 
Elizabethan  period.  There  is  not  a  particle  of 
solid  evidence  to  prove  that  it  was  once  the 
property  of  the  poet.  More  reticence,  too,  is 
desirable  on  the  part  of  those  cicerones  who  point 
to  an  oak  desk  from  the  Grammar  School  as 
"Shakespeare's  desk,"  for  there  again  adequate 
authority  is  lacking,  just  as  there  is  nothing  to 
establish  the  authenticity  of  the  "  round  oak  box 
made  of  wood  from  Shakespeare's  pew." 

Many  of  the  objects  shown  in  the  Museum, 
however,  have  the  attractive  quality  of  atmosphere. 
That  is,  they  date  indubitably  from  the  England 
of  Shakespeare's  days.  Among  such  are  the  cast 
of  the  face  of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  from  his  monu- 
ment in  Charlecote  Church,  the  various  coins  of 
Elizabeth's  reign,  and  the  collection  of  early 
editions  of  the  plays.  But  it  is  the  documents, 
the  deeds  and  wills  and  conveyances  and  records  of 
lawsuits,  and  the  private  letters  which  make 
least  demand  on  the  "easy  faith  "  which  is  more 
rare  to-day  than  in  the  credulous  age  of  Washing- 

46 


THE   "BIRTHPLACE 

ton  Irving.  Those  time-stained  scraps  of  vellum 
or  paper  are  their  own  evidence,  and  among  them 
all  the  one  of  most  absorbing  interest  is  that 
brief  epistle  from  Richard  Quyney  to  his  "Loveinge 
good  Frend  and  countreymann  mr.  Wm.  Shacke- 
spere  y)  which  is  the  only  letter  addressed  to  the 
poet  of  which  there  is  any  knowledge. 

When,  then,  all  deductions  have  been  made, 
and  the  scientific  spirit  placated  to  the  full,  the 
residuum  of  interest  attaching  to  the  Henley  Street 
cottages  is  sufficient  to  warrant  the  devotion 
of  literary  pilgrims.  In  one  or  other  of  those 
buildings  Shakespeare  undoubtedly  spent  the  years 
of  his  boyhood  and  early  manhood ;  wherever  he 
was  born,  it  was  in  Henley  Street  he  had  his 
home  before  setting  out  on  his  high  adventure 
in  London;  and  it  is  no  meagre  satisfaction  for  the 
hero-worshipping  instinct  that  the  rooms  which 
once  echoed  to  his  childish  laughter  contain 
several  of  those  quarto  editions  of  his  plays  which 
were  printed  in  his  own  lifetime.  And  for  the 
rest,  the  peaceful  little  garden  in  the  rear  of 
the  poet's  house  is  richly  sown  with  descendants 
of  those  fruits  and   flowers  which  have  acquired 

47 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

an  added  fame  through  many  allusions  in  his 
deathless  lines.  His  memory  is  enshrined  for  ever 
in  "  the  lily's  white  "  and  "the  deep  vermilion  of 
the  rose." 


48 


CHAPTER  II  :  New  Place 

WASHINGTON  IRVING  was  so 
fascinated  by  Stratford- on-Avon  that 
six  years  after  the  poetical  pilgrimage 
described  in  his  "  Sketch-Book  "  he  paid  a  second 
visit  to  the  town.  It  was  on  that  occasion  he 
penned  the  lines  the  original  autograph  of  which 
is  preserved  among  the  treasures  of  the  birth- 
place : 

"  Of  mighty  Shakespeare  s  birth  the  room  we  see  ; 
That  where  he  died  in  vain  to  find  we  try. 
Useless  the  search  : — -for  all  Immortal  He, 
And  those  who  are  Immortal  never  die." 

Six  years,  then,  had  wrought  no  change  in  his 
"  easy  faith  "  ;  he  still  accepted  the  apartment  in 
the  Henley  Street  cottage  as  the  veritable  birth- 
chamber  of  the  poet ;  and  his  allusion  to  the 
scene  of  Shakespeare's  death  seems  to  suggest 
that  he  knew  nothing  of  New  Place  and  its 
interesting  associations.  In  the  "  Sketch-Book," 
indeed,  Irving  recorded  how  he  passed  from  the 

d  49 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

birthplace  of  the  poet  to  his  grave,  with  never  a 
reference  to  the  site  of  that  house  which  was 
connected  with  the  fruition  of  his  fortunes  and 
was  the  place  of  his  death.  Strangely  enough, 
too,  Stratford's  other  famous  American  pilgrim, 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  was  guilty  of  the  same 
oversight  nearly  half  a  century  later,  for  he  also 
wrote  that  "  from  Shakespeare's  house  the  next 
step,  of  course,  is  to  visit  his  burial-place." 

And  yet  such  an  order  of  pilgrimage  ignores 
the  most  interesting  spot  in  Stratford — that  vacant 
plot  of  ground  where  once  stood  the  building  in 
which  the  poet  spent  the  last  few  years  of  his  life 
as  an  honoured  and  wealthy  citizen  of  his  native 
town.  No  doubt  the  grave  of  Shakespeare  is  a 
firm  fact  for  which,  amid  so  much  shifting 
ground,  the  pilgrim  must  be  duly  grateful ;  but, 
as  compared  with  the  conflicting  legends  of  the 
birthplace,  the  documentary  evidence  which  con- 
nects the  dramatist  with  New  Place  is  of  such 
an  assured  nature  that  even  its  houseless  site  is  a 
haunt  of  surpassing  interest. 

Such,  no  doubt,  Irving  and  Hawthorne  would 
have  thought  it  had  they  been  aware  first  of  its 

50 


NEW  PLiACE 

existence  and  then  of  the  memories  it  suggests. 
They  may  not  have  been  ignorant  of  the  first  ;  of 
the  second  they  were  naturally  oblivious,  seeing 
that  at  the  time  of  their  visits  J.  O.  Halliwell- 
Phillipps  had  not  given  to  the  world  that  pains- 
taking volume  in  which,  at  the  cost  of  so  much 
zealous  research,  he  was  able  to  set  forth  the 
full  extent  of  Shakespeare's  association  with 
New  Place. 

Although  the  poet's  ownership  of  the  house 
naturally  overshadows  every  other  incident  of  its 
history,  its  annals  prior  and  subsequent  to  that 
event  were  more  remarkable  than  is  usually  the 
case  with  a  modest  mansion  in  a  quiet  country 
town.  All  told,  that  history  embraced  a  period 
of  nearly  three  centuries,  for  the  original  building 
makes  an  appearance  in  documentary  records  so 
long  ago  as  1483,  and  its  successor  was  not  finally 
demolished  until  1759. 

For  the  pilgrim  of  to-day,  then,  the  objective 
next  in  order  to  the  birthplace  is  that  vacant  lot 
at  the  corner  of  Chapel  Street  and  Chapel  Lane 
where  the  New  Place  mansion  once  stood.  The 
frontage,  which  is  somewhat  narrow,  is  on  Chapel 

5i 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Street,  and  is  adjoined  to  the  north  by  an  ancient 
building  known  as  Nash's  House ;  in  its  depth 
the  site  extends  eastward  down  Chapel  Lane  for  a 
considerable  distance.  The  whole  is  shut  off  from 
the  public  thoroughfares  by  an  ornamental  iron 
railing,  which  is,  however,  broken  by  a  gateway  a 
little  distance  down  Chapel  Lane.  That  gateway 
marks  approximately  the  dividing  line  between 
the  small  garden  at  the  rear  of  the  house  and  the 
great  garden  which  stretched  eastward  in  the 
direction  of  the  Avon. 

And  another  feature  of  the  gateway  in  the 
garden  of  New  Place  is  that  it  is  the  only  entrance 
to  a  Shakespeare  shrine  in  the  town  which  may  be 
passed  without  paying  a  monetary  toll.  Such  an 
exception  deserves  to  be  recorded  in  letters  of 
gold.  A  small  Stratford  boy  who  accompanied 
the  present  writer  on  some  of  his  wanderings  bore 
unconscious  testimony  to  the  spirit  of  the  place. 
"  I  don't  agree,"  said  he,  "  with  all  the  fuss 
people  make  about  that  Shakespeare."  "  Why  ?  " 
"  Well,  look  at  the  lot  of  money  he  gets  !  " 
That  he  was  astonished  when  he  learnt  that  the 
aforesaid  Shakespeare  was  dead  does  not  blunt  the 

52 


NEW  PLt^CE 

point  of  his  impeachment.  Certainly  a  "  lot  of 
money ':  is  demanded  in  the  name  of  the  poet. 
All  who  have  a  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things  must 
rejoice  to  learn  that  a  discerning  American  has 
christened  Stratford  as  "  the  sixpenny  town." 
There  is  no  getting  away  from  that  sixpenny  fee. 
If  the  pilgrim  wishes  to  visit  the  birthplace  the 
charge  is  sixpence ;  if  he  desires  to  inspect  the 
museum  under  the  same  roof  he  must  hand  out 
another  sixpence  ;  if  he  would  walk  over  the  site 
of  New  Place  the  cry  is  still  sixpence  ;  if  he  would 
enter  the  Memorial  Theatre  he  cannot  do  it  under 
sixpence  ;  if  he  wanders  out  to  Anne  Hathaway's 
cottage  the  sixpenny  tribute  pursues  him  still. 
It  is  not  the  amount,  but  the  constant  iteration 
which  is  so  wearisome.  If  the  fee  must  be  retained, 
why  cannot  the  trustees  come  to  an  arrangement 
whereby  each  pilgrim  will  be  able  to  purchase  the 
freedom  of  the  town  for  a  specific  sum  and  be  rid 
of  the  whole  sordid  business  in  one  transaction  ? 

Even  New  Place,  as  noted  above,  is  tainted  by 
the  blight  of  that  sixpenny  toll  to  a  certain 
extent ;  that  is,  the  small  and  great  gardens  at  the 
rear  are  divided  by  a  fence  running  parallel  to  the 

53 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

gateway  on  Chapel  Lane,  and  the  ground  to  the 
west  of  that  fence  may  not  be  trodden  unless 
the  sixpenny  tribute  is  forthcoming. 

But,  that  justice  may  be  done,  let  it  be 
admitted  that,  so  far  as  the  grounds  of  New 
Place  are  concerned,  the  pilgrim  who  pays  nothing 
has  the  advantage  of  him  who  pays  sixpence.  He 
can,  an  he  list,  overlook  the  site  of  Shakespeare's 
last  home  to  his  heart's  content,  carefully  con 
the  broken  outlines  of  its  foundations,  note  the 
position  of  the  poet's  well,  and,  if  he  have 
the  gift  of  imagination,  conjure  up  a  vision  of  the 
sweet  bard  of  Avon  in  his  sunset  days;  and  then 
he  can  turn  away  to  wander  at  his  will  along  the 
trim  paths  and  among  the  shaven  lawns  and 
radiant  flower-beds  which  represent  to-day  that 
leafy  pleasance  which  was  once  the  dramatist's 
great  garden.  It  is  an  ideal  retreat  for  an  hour's 
meditation.  From  various  points  of  view  the  eye 
catches  glimpses  of  quaint  gables  of  ancient 
houses  or  the  old  grey  tower  of  the  Guild  Chapel, 
while  the  shrubs  and  trees  and  flowers  might  be 
the  lineal  descendants  of  those  planted  by  Shake- 
speare's own  hand.      Nay,  on  the  edge  of  one 

54 


NEW  PLtACE 

velvety  lawn  there  stands  the  gnarled  and  aged 
trunk  which  is  said  to  be  the  scion  of  the  poet's 
own  famous  mulberry-tree. 

In  another  corner  have  been  erected  some  time- 
stained  pillars  which  once  adorned  an  ancient 
building  of  the  town,  and  near  by  is  a  stone  tablet 
inscribed  with  a  closely  written  legend.  This 
legend,  which  purports  to  be  an  extract  from  a 
work  entitled  "  The  Acts  and  Monuments  of  the 
Fairies,"  is  a  decree  of  King  Oberon  addressed  to 
such  of  his  loving  subjects  as  were  accustomed  to 
hold  their  revels  in  the  poet's  garden. 

"  And  whereas,"  so  the  decree  runs,  "  by  the 
wilful  and  malicious  destruction  of  the  said 
mulberry-tree,  as  before  recited,  and  other  damage 
at  New  Place,  late  the  mortal  residence  of  the 
said  William  Shakespeare  of  immortal  memory, 
the  sports  and  recreations  of  our  good  subjects 
have  been  grievously  disturbed  and  interrupted, 
now  we,  taking  the  same  into  our  serious  con- 
sideration, have  ordered  and  ordained,  and  by 
these  presents  do  order  and  ordain,  that  the  said 
sports  and  recreations  formerly  kept  and  held  by 
our  good  people  under  the  said  mulberry-tree  do 

55 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

forthwith  cease  at  the  place  where  the  said 
mulberry-tree  stood,  and  that  from  thenceforth 
they  be  duly  celebrated  and  observed  with 
accustomed  rites  in  the  piece  of  ground  next 
thereunto  adjoining,  being  part  or  parcel  of  the 
terrestrial  estate  of  the  said  William  Shakespeare, 
and  now  belonging  to  our  beloved  William 
Hunt,  of  whose  affection  for  us  and  our  people 
we  have  undoubted  assurance,  so  likewise  of  his 
care  to  cultivate  the  same  with  all  manner  of  pro- 
ductions agreeable  to  us,  and  to  cause  the  same 
to  be  laid  in  proper  places  with  clean  and  close- 
binding  gravel,  and  the  grass  thereof  to  be  greatly 
and  frequently  mowed  for  the  better  accommoda- 
tion of  our  good  subjects  in  celebrating  the  said 
rites ;  and  our  royal  will  and  pleasure  further 
is  that  a  part  of  the  said  ground  lying  nearest  to 
the  river  Avon,  and  appropriated  hereby  to  the 
celebration  of  the  said  rites,  shall  henceforth 
be  called  Fairy  Lawn,  and  that  a  fair  pedestal  or 
table  of  stone  shall  be  erected  in  the  centre  of  the 
said  lawn,  and  an  inscription,  recording  our  affec- 
tion and  regard  for  the  said  William  Shakespeare 
and  our  determination  herein,  engraven  thereon." 

56 


NEW  PL^CE 

This  pleasant  conceit  originated  in  the  brain  of 
the  Rev.  Richard  Jago,  vicar  of  that  Snitterfield 
parish  in  which  Shakespeare's  father  was  born,  and 
was  sent  by  him  in  1778  to  his  friend  William 
Hunt,  town  clerk  of  Stratford,  who  at  that  time 
rented  the  poet's  great  garden  at  New  Place. 
Doubtless  the  reverend  allegorist  little  anticipated 
that  his  fable  would  one  day  adorn  a  "  fair 
pedestal '  in  Shakespeare's  garden,  but  there 
it  stands  to-day,  mutely  eloquent  of  a  fantasy 
which  would  surely  have  found  favour  with 
the  creator  of  King  Oberon. 

And  other  pleasant  memories  of  the  sweet 
bard  of  Avon  are  suggested  by  the  thought  that 
somewhere  in  the  great  garden  of  New  Place  once 
stood  the  orchard  which  Shakespeare  is  credited 
with  planting  in  1602.  "  The  bare  fact  would 
interest  little,"  noted  a  close  student  of  the 
dramas,  "  did  not  his  pomological  labours  affect 
his  literary  work.  If  we  scan  his  plays  up  to  1597 
and  after  1604,  we  find  that  the  outdoor  scenes 
are  laid  in  forests,  parks,  gardens,  woods,  and 
terraces.  The  orchard  is  mentioned  twice  in 
1  Romeo  and  Juliet,'  1593,  and  the  final  scene  of 

57 


SHAKESPEARE  -/.YD   STRATFORD 

'King  John,'  1595,  is  laid  in  the  orchard  of 
Swinstead  Abbey  (the  situation  in  this  instance 
is  taken  from  the  ;  Troublesome  History  ')  :  but 
in  nearly  all  the  plays  written  between  the  years 
named  some  scenes  are  laid  or  there  are  frequent 
references  to  orchard?.  In  c2  Henry  IV,1  1598, 
*  His  lordship  is  walked  forth  into  the  orchard  '  ; 
later  in  the  same  play  Shallow  proudly  offers 
to  show  Falstaff  his  orchard.  Some  of  the  scenes 
in  that  delightful  comedy  ;  Much  Ado  about 
Nothing.'  ibcc.  are  enacted  in  Leonato's  orchard  ; 
it  is  in  the  pleached  bower  where  honeysuckles 
ripen  in  the  sun  that  Beatrice  is  so  cunningly 
duped.  'As  You  Like  It,'  1622,  opens  in  an 
rchard,  and  'Twelfth  Night,'  1601,  has  some 
incidents  in  fruit-tree  territory.  In  ;  Hamlet,' 
1602,  twice  it  is  stated  that  it  was  'while  sleep- 
ing in  mine  orchard'  that  Hamlet's  father  met  his 
fate;  in  Brutus's  orchard  ("Julius  Caesar,'  1604) 
the  conspiritors  met  and  planned  one  of  the  big 
assassinations  of  the  world  ;  and,  finally,  in 
'Troilus  and  Cressida,'  i6c6,  in  Pandarus's 
orchard,  the  Trojan  wins  the  love  of  the  false 
Cressida.  The  emphatic  use  of  the  possessive 
53 


XEir  PL-ACE 


indeed. 


-.-: 


:ng   :r.   "e   :r.::,;   r.ea:;: 

'nay.  y:u  sha ';  see  -t 

■  T  .     . 

•  ~:r.e      :r.   ■  Ham.e:  — -: 

:-i:  H-:::'s  fan—  L.i  ' 

by  z'r.t  ;-  :::  =  r.i  :r.  his 

the  most  cheerful  davs 


ere  an: 


L 


; :  y   of  livir.r.    I  living 


-  -  _  - . 
_ . .  - 


. .     • . 

:p  oat  in  all 


joilincation. 
spent  much 

chamber-wi 


re 
5?n 


-- 


ne 


Or.e  :ar. 


-*  '      v 


w: 


:.ng   ::   -:: 


:_r    in 


offer     •::"    a     la; 

grarr.r.r  '  :  " 
One  or"  the  stn 


of    my    own 


i»  .5 


•.:.-.-■      : 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Place  is  that  it  did  not  make  any  great  figure  in 
the  annals  of  the  poet  until  the  last  house  built 
on  the  site  had  been  demolished  and  the  Shake- 
speare mulberry-tree  cut  down.  Dugdale's  silence 
as  to  the  birthplace  of  Shakespeare  has  already 
been  noted ;  he  was  equally  unobservant  of  the 
house  in  which  he  died.  Nay,  to  be  strictly 
accurate,  he  did  devote  a  few  lines  to  the  house 
when  he  visited  Stratford  in  1653,  but  failed 
to  connect  the  building  with  the  dramatist.  In 
his  references  to  the  Guild  Chapel  he  wrote  that 
to  the  north  of  that  structure  stood  "  a  fair  house 
of  brick  and  timber,"  the  erection  of  which  he 
attributed  to  Sir  Hugh  Clopton,  and  this  was 
none  other  than  the  New  Place  mansion  in  which 
Shakespeare  had  breathed  his  last  thirty-seven 
years  earlier. 

Locally,  of  course,  the  fact  of  the  poet's  owner- 
ship of  New  Place  was  well  known,  and  in  a  plan 
of  Stratford  drawn  in  1759  the  house  is  indicated 
as  the  "  place  where  died  Shakespeare."  That, 
however,  was  not  literally  true,  as  will  appear 
presently,  but  it  was  the  common  belief,  and  was 
accepted  as  a  fact  by  the  lady  who  was  the  first 
60 


NEW  PLzACE 

to  announce  the  destruction  of  the  poet's  mulberry- 
tree  to  the  outside  world.  r~TFwas  in  iyScTthat  the 
lady  in  question,  being  on  a  visit  to  Stratford, 
wrote  as  follows  to  a  friend  in  Kent:  "There 
stood  here  till  lately  the  house  in  which  Shakespeare 
lived,  and  a  mulberry-tree  of  his  planting  ;  the  ' 
house  was  large,  strong,  and  handsome  ;  the  tree 
so  large  that  it  would  shade  the  grass-plot  in  your 
garden,  which  I  think  is  more  than  twenty  yards  '' 
square,  and  supply  the  whole  town  with  mulberries  ) 
every  year.  /  As  the  curiosity  of  this  house  ana 
tree  brought  much  fame,  and  more  company  and 
profit  to  the  town,  a  certain  man,  on  some  disgust, 
has  pulled  the  house  down,  so  as  not  to  leave  one 
stone  upon  another,  and  cut  down  the  tree,  and 
piled  it  as  a  stack  of  firewood,  to  the  great  vexa- 
tion, loss,  and  disappointment  of  the  inhabitants ; 
however,  an  honest  silversmith  bought  the  whole 
stack  of  wood,  and  makes  many  odd  things  of  this 
wood  for  the  curious,  some  of  which  I  hope  to 
bring  with  me  to  town." 

Now  the  "  certain  man  "  who  perpetrated  that 
dual  vandalism  was  of  course  the  Rev.  Francis 
Gastrell,  who  became  the  owner  of  New  Place  in 

61 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

1756.  He  is  the  Judas  Iscariot  of  Shakespearean 
biography.  Until  recent  years,  when  more  ac- 
curate knowledge  has  supplanted  careless  legend, 
he  was  the  Anathema  Maran-atha  of  every 
devotee  of  the  poet,  for  on  his  luckless  head 
was  piled  the  heavy  mountain  of  opprobrium 
of  having  ruthlessly  torn  down  the  indubitable 
house  in  which  Shakespeare  spent  his  last  peace- 
ful years  and  laid  him  down  to  die. 

No  doubt  the  reverend  iconoclast  of  New  Place 
was  a  disagreeable,  or  at  least  an  irritable,  person. 
The  testimony  on  that  point  seems  too  clear  to  be 
gainsaid.  And  it  would  appear  that  Mrs.  Gastrell 
shared  his  failing,  for,  according  to  Malone,  she 
was  "  little  better  than  a  fiend,"  and  is  credited 
with  having  played  a  prominent  part  in  the 
destruction  of  the  famous  mulberry-tree.  Which- 
ever of  the  two,  however,  was  guilty  of  what 
Boswell  called  the  "  Gothic  barbarity  "  of  felling 
that  tree,  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  can  be 
j usdy_charged  with  razing  Shakespeare's  house. 
/For,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  building  had  been 

/  demolished    more    than    fifty    years    before    Mr. 
Gastrell  became  the  owner  of  New  Place.     The 

1  62 


NEW  PLzACE 

evidence  on  this  point  is  beyond  dispute  ;  if  any  / 
one  is  to  be  execrated  for  destroying  the  house  in  I 
which  the  poet  lived  and  died  it  is  that  Sir  John/ 
Clopton  who,  about  the  year  1700,  pulled  down 
the  original  structure  and  replaced  it  with  a  more  \ 
modern  building  as  a  kind  of  wedding  gift  to  his  ) 
son  Hugh. 

Reduced,  then,  to  rigid  accuracy,  the  count 
against  the  Rev.  Francis  amounts  to  this :  the 
house  he  destroyed  was  merely  the  successor  of 
that  in  which  Shakespeare  died,  while  as  to  the 
mulberry-tree  the  evidence  that  it  was  actually 
planted  by  the  poet  is  in  no  link  stronger  than 
tradition. 

As  the  mulberry-tree  crops  up  as  persistently  in 
the  biographies  of  Shakespeare  as  King  Charles's 
head  in  Mr.  Dick's  petition,  it  may  be  interesting 
to  winnow  the  facts  from  the  fiction  as  far  as  that  is 
possible.  To  begin  with,  then,  it  seems  established 
beyond  dispute  that  there  is  no  reference  to  the 
existence  of  the  tree  of  a  date  prior  to  its  destruc- 
tion ;  only  after  it  was  "  piled  as  a  stack  of  fire- 
wood "  did  it  emerge  from  the  obscurity  in  which 
it  had  been  hidden  for  so  many  years.     Even  then 

63 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

the  farthest-back  date  in  its  history  reached  no 
nearer  Shakespeare's  time  than  the  year  1 744.  It 
was  the  actor  Macklin  who,  in  1788,  when  he  was 
in  his  eighty-eighth  year,  asserted  that  he  had  been 
entertained  under  the  famous  tree  by  Sir  Hugh 
Clopton  in  1744.  Another  witness  sometimes 
cited  was  one  named  Hugh  Taylor,  a  native  of 
Stratford,  who  in  1790,  when  he  was  eighty-five 
years  old,  claimed  that  in  his  boyhood  the  legend 
that  the  tree  was  planted  by  Shakespeare  was 
generally  believed  in  the  town,  and  that  he  had 
often  partaken  of  its  fruit.  Both  these  witnesses, 
however,  did  not  come  forward  with  their  testi- 
mony until  after  the  tree  had  been  cut  down. 

Their  evidence,  combined  with  much  of  a 
similar  nature,  is  conclusive  on  the  point  that 
many  years  before  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  the  planting  of  the  tree  by  Shakespeare 
was  accepted  in  Stratford  as  a  fact,  but  that 
belief  was  based  solely  upon  the  assertion  of  that 
member  of  the  Clopton  family  who  owned  New 
Place  from  the  early  years  of  the  century.  Beyond 
that  point  there  is  no  record  of  the  legend. 

By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  how- 

64 


NEW  PLiACE 

ever,  the  mulberry-tree  was  regarded  as  one  of 
the  most  valuable  assets  of  the  town.  It  was,  as 
we  have  seen,  a  curiosity  which  brought  "much 
fame  and  more  company  and  profit "  to  Stratford. 
Consequently  when  the  Rev.  Francis  had  it 
destroyed  he  at  once  became  the  most  unpopular 
man  in  the  town,  and  the  boys  gave  point 
to  the  general  indignation  by  breaking  his 
windows.  "The  people  of  Stratford  were  seized 
with  grief  and  astonishment  when  they  were 
informed  of  the  sacrilegious  deed  ;  and  nothing 
less  than  the  destruction  of  the  offender  in  the 
first  transports  of  their  rage  would  satisfy  them. 
The  miserable  culprit  was  forced  to  skulk  up  and 
down  to  save  himself  from  the  rage  of  the 
Stratfordians  :  he  was  obliged  at  last  to  leave  the 
town  amidst  the  curses  of  the  populace,  who 
solemnly  vowed  never  to  suffer  one  of  the  same 
name  to  reside  in  Stratford."  Ten  years'  later 
Mr.  Gastrell  still  retained  a  vivid  and  resentful 
recollection  of  those  exciting  days.  "  I  shall 
hardly  ever,"  he  wrote,  "  entertain  any  thoughts 
of  returning  to  a  place  where  I  have  been  so 
maltreated." 

e  65 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

As    the  reverend  tree-feller  never  offered  any 
justification  or  excuse  of  his  "  Gothic  barbarity," 
it  is  difficult  to  divine  his  motive  for  destroying 
a    relic    which    was    held    in    such    superlative 
veneration.      Dr.   Johnson's  theory  was  that  he 
did  it  to  "vex  his  neighbours,"  but  the  explana- 
tion of  Halliwell-Phillipps  is  more  reasonable  and 
charitable.      "  Several  accounts  agree  in   stating 
that  the  tree  had  attained  a  great  magnitude,  with 
overhanging  boughs,  the  trunk  being  in  a  state  of 
decay,  and,  indeed,  it  is  most  probable  that  a  tree 
of  a  century  and  a  half's  growth  would  have  been 
of  a  very  considerable  size,  the  soil  of  Stratford 
being     peculiarly    favourable    to    the    luxurious 
growth  of  the  mulberry.     If  planted  at  all  near 
the  house,  its  boughs  would  certainly  have  over- 
shadowed some  of  the  rooms  at  the  back.     Now 
Davies,  in  his  '  Life  of  Garrick,'  the  first  edition 
of  which  appeared  in    1780,   and  was    probably 
written  in  the  previous  year,  expressly  asserts  that 
'the   mulberry-tree    planted    by   the    poet's  own 
hand  became  an  object  of  dislike  to  this  tasteless 
owner  of  it,  because  it  overshadowed  his  window, 
and  rendered  the  house,  as  he  thought,  subject  to 
66 


NEW  PLzACE 

damp  and  moisture.'  Here  is  a  plausible  reason 
given  for  the  removal  of  the  tree,  which  may  have 
been  accomplished  somewhat  thoughtlessly,  with- 
out a  full  idea  of  the  indignation  the  act  would 
excite  at  Stratford  ;  or  it  is  not  impossible,  alas  ! 
that  the  tree  was  in  such  a  state  of  decay 
that  its  removal  was  considered  by  Gastrell  an 
act  merely  briefly  anticipating  its  natural  extinc- 
tion." 

Whatever  the  actual  motive  for  the  felling  of 
the  tree,  its  demolition  was  not  an  unmixed  evil 
for  some  natives  of  the  town.  With  that  instinct 
for  turning  Shakespeare  to  pecuniary  advantage 
which  is  still  possessed  in  large  measure  by  so 
many  Stratfordians,  several  contemporaries  of  the 
Gastrell  era  immediately  recognized  the  golden 
possibilities  which  lay  dormant  in  that  pile  of 
mulberry-tree  logs.  Thus  one  picturesque  story 
affirms  that  the  silversmith,  Thomas  Sharp  by 
name,  who  purchased  the  tree  did  so  for  the 
purpose  of  utilizing  it  as  firewood,  but  was 
awakened  to  its  value  by  the  remark  of  a  friend 
to  the  effect  that  it  would  be  more  profitable  to 
carve  it  into  souvenirs.     Sharp  himself,  however, 

67 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

was  wont  to  affirm  that  it  was  his  "  sincere 
veneration  for  the  memory  of  its  celebrated 
planter  "  which  prompted  him  to  purchase  the  tree 
and  work  it  into  "  many  curious  toys  and  useful 
articles." 

His  industry  in  the  employment  appears  to 
have  been  as  inexhaustible  as  the  supply  of  wood. 
The  latter  had  the  recuperative  quality  of  the 
widow's  cruse.  It  has  been  calculated  that  there 
is  enough  wood  of  the  "  true  Cross  "  in  existence 
to  build  a  battleship ;  another  calculation  might 
disclose  that  Shakespeare's  mulberry-tree  contained 
sufficient  lumber  to  have  equipped  all  the  half- 
timber  houses  of  his  native  town.  Mulberry-tree 
relics,  carved  into  goblets  and  ink-stands  and  boxes 
and  tea-chests  and  tobacco-stoppers  and  standishes, 
poured  from  Sharp's  workshop  in  such  an  increas- 
ing stream  that  within  a  few  years  of  the 
destruction  of  the  tree  he  was  accused  of  using 
spurious  wood.  He  repelled  the  charge  with  indig- 
nation, and  the  supply  of  relics  flowed  on  as  before  ; 
and  when  Garrick  superintended  the  "  Jubilee  " 
of  1769  he  bore  a  steward's  wand  made  from  the 
prolific  tree  and  was  adorned  with  a  medallion 
68 


NEW  PLzACE 

portrait  of  the  poet  carved  on  a  piece  of  the  same 
inexhaustible  material.  Nay,  the  supply  had  not 
ceased  fifty  years  after  Sharp's  happy  purchase  ; 
for  the  remarkable  John  Ange,  who  assured 
Washington  Irving  that  he  had  assisted  in  felling 
the  miraculous  tree,  still  possessed  a  fragment 
which  he  offered  to  sell  to  the  American  pilgrim  ! 
Well  might  Garrick  sing  : 


a 


All  shall  yield  to  the  Mulberry-Tree, 
Bend  to  Thee, 
Blest  Mul-berry." 


As  already  recorded,  a  veteran  mulberry-tree 
still  stands  in  the  great  garden  of  New  Place  for 
which  the  claim  is  made  that  it  is  a  scion  of  the 
one  planted  by  Shakespeare  ;  and  another,  a  sup- 
posed grand-scion,  may  be  found  in  the  little 
garden  of  New  Place  site.  But,  unfortunately, 
their  genealogy  is  open  to  suspicion,  for  Robert 
B.  Whaler,  the  careful  historian  of  Stratford,  was 
of  the  opinion  that  the  old  tree  was  not  per- 
petuated, adding :  "  Many  people  are  willing 
enough  to  affirm  their  own  as  a  scion  from  the 

69 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

celebrated  tree,  but  unfortunately  their  tales  are 
foolish  and  improbable  when  examined."  But 
the  great  garden  of  New  Place  has  sufficient 
merits  of  its  own,  especially  for  the  devotee  who 
muses  therein  in  the  spirit  which  prompted 
Malone  to  write  : 


a 


In  this  retreat  our  Shakespeare' s  godlike  mind 
With  matchless  skill  surveyed  all  human  kind. 
Here  let  each  sweet  that  blest  Arabia  knows, 
'  Flowers  of  all  hues,  and  without  thorn  the 

rose. 
To  latest  times  their  balmy  odours  fling, 
And  Nature  here  display  eternal  spring." 


Shakespeare's  connexion  with  New  Place  began 
in  1597,  at  which  date  the  house  was  fully  a 
hundred  years  old.  The  earliest  owner  of  whom 
there  is  any  record  was  that  Sir  John  Clopton, 
the  wealthy  mercer  who  became  Lord  Mayor  of 
London  in  1 49 1 ,  who  was  so  generous  a  benefactor 
to  his  native  town  of  Stratford,  for  the  reference 
in  his  will  to  his  "  grete  house  in  Stratford-upon- 
Avon,"  when  taken  in  conjunction  with  the 
70 


NEW  PLiACE 

inquisition  made  on  the  death  of  the  knight,  makes 
it  clear  that  the  "  grete  house  "  and  New  Place 
were  one  and  the  same  building.  For  our  first 
description  of  the  edifice  we  are  indebted  to  the 
pen  of  John  Leland,  the  antiquary,  who  visited 
Stratford  about  1540,  and  when  referring  to  the 
Guild  Chapel  noted  that  "  this  Hugh  Clopton 
builded  also  by  the  north  syde  of  this  chappell  a 
praty  house  of  bricke  and  tymbre."  Some  three 
years  after  Leland's  visit  this  "pretty  house  of 
brick  and  timber  "  was  leased  for  forty  years  to 
Dr.  Thomas  Bentley,  who  was  physician  to 
Henry  VIII,  and  who,  on  his  death  about  1549, 
left  the  remainder  of  the  lease  to  his  wife  on  the 
condition  that  she  did  not  marry  again.  The 
bequest  was  not  of  any  great  value,  for  at  the 
time  of  Dr.  Bentley 's  death  the  house  was  in 
"great  ruyne  and  decay  and  unrepayryd  " ;  that 
his  widow  did  not  esteem  it  in  comparison  with 
the  attractions  of  second  wifehood  may  be 
inferred  from  the  fact  that  she  soon  married 
again. 

By  this  time  the  "  grete  house  "  of  Sir  Hugh 
Clopton's  will  and  the  "  praty  house  "  of  Leland 

7i 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

was  known  as  New  Place,  for  it  appears  under 
that  name  in  the  legal  documents  which  were 
occasioned  by  the  widow  Bentley's  marriage ; 
consequently  there  is  no  foundation  for  the  state- 
ment so  often  made  that  it  was  Shakespeare 
who  christened  the  property  "  New  Place."  Two 
other  owners  intervened  between  the  Bentleys 
and  the  poet,  Willian  Bott  and  William  Under- 
bill, and  it  was  with  the  latter  that,  early  in  1597, 
William  Shakespeare  came  to  an  agreement  to 
purchase  the  property,  described  as  consisting  of 
one  messuage  and  two  barns  and  two  gardens,  for 
the  sum  of  sixty  pounds. 

Only  eleven  years  had  passed  since,  a  young  man 
of  some  twenty-two  summers,  the  eldest  son  of 
John  Shakespeare  had  started  for  London  in  quest 
of  fortune.  And  now  he  is  back  again  purchasing 
what  was  perhaps  the  most  considerable  house  in 
Stratford.  How  had  he  achieved  such  rapid 
success  ? 

Nothing  more  than  a  brief  answer  to  that 
question  need  be  attempted.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  tradition  described  the  young  Shake- 
speare as  rinding  his  first  employment  in 
72 


NEW  PLzACE 

London  at  the  doors  of  theatres,  where  he  took 
charge  of  the  horses  of  the  playgoers,  and  one  of 
his  biographers  has  agreed  that  there  is  "  no 
inherent  improbability  "  in  the  story.  Another 
version  credits  the  young  Stratfordian  with  such 
efficiency  in  this  horse-tending  business  that  he 
speedily  became  so  much  a  favourite  as  prompted 
him  to  hire  a  band  of  lads  who,  when  "  Will 
Shakespeare "  was  called  for,  immediately  pre- 
sented themselves  with  the  statement,  "  I  am 
Shakespeare's  boy,  sir."  This  tale,  however,  is 
dismissed  as  "  apocryphal "  by  the  biographer 
who  sees  no  "  inherent  improbability"  in  the 
balder  version.  Yet  there  have  been  plenty  of 
modern  instances,  in  America  if  not  in  England, 
of  sharp-witted  but  poor  youths  who  have  risen 
to  wealth  in  theatredom  by  enterprise  not  vastly 
different  from  that  which  is  said  to  have  given  the 
young  Shakespeare  his  first  foothold  on  the  ladder 
of  fortune. 

Anyway,  it  is  beyond  dispute  that  soon  after 
arriving  in  London  he  formed  some  kind  of 
connexion  with  the  playhouse,  from  which  he 
went  on  to  his  triumphs  as  an  actor  and  then  as  a 

73 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

dramatist.  And  in  eleven  years  he  had  obviously 
been  able  to  amass  sufficient  capital  to  warrant  him 
becoming  the  purchaser  of  New  Place. 

As  Sir  Sidney  Lee  has  reminded  us,  too  many 
gratuitous  difficulties  have  been  imported  into 
the  question  of  Shakespeare's  financial  prosperity. 
He  concludes  that  the  nineteen  plays  which  may 
be  set  to  the  poet's  credit  between  1 591  and  1599 
cannot  have  produced  less  than  two  hundred 
pounds,  or  some  twenty  pounds  a  year,  and  that 
takes  no  account  of  his  earnings  as  an  actor.  Now, 
that  the  stage  was  a  profitable  occupation  at  the 
close  of  the  sixteenth  century  seems  beyond 
question.  There  is  a  reference  in  the  univer- 
sity play  of  "The  Return  from  Parnassus" 
which,  especially  in  its  last  line,  may  be  taken 
as  stating  the  case  of  Shakespeare.  One  of  the 
speakers,  a  poor  student,  makes  an  envious 
complaint  of  the  wealth  by  which  actors  were 
rewarded  : 

"  England  affords  these  glorious  vagabonds, 
That  carried  erst  their  fardles  on  their  backs, 
Coursers  to  ride  on  through  the  gazing  streets, 

74 


NEW  PLzACE 

Sweeping  it  in  their  glaring  satin  suits, 

And  pages  to  attend  their  masterships  : 

With  mouthing  words  that  better  wits  had  framed, 

They  purchase  lands  and  now  esquires  are  made." 

Altogether,  then,  Sir  Sidney  Lee  computes  that  the 
income  of  Shakespeare  from  his  plays  and  earnings 
as  an  actor  averaged  a  hundred  and  thirty  pounds 
a  year  prior  to  1599,  and  he  adds  that  such  a  sum, 
equal  in  value  to  a  thousand  pounds  in  modern 
times,  would  be  regarded  as  a  very  large  income 
in  a  country  town.  "  According  to  the  author  of 
'  Ratsei's  Ghost,'  "  comments  the  same  judicial 
authority,  "  the  actor,  who  may  well  have  been 
meant  for  Shakespeare,  practised  in  London  a 
strict  frugality,  and  there  seems  no  reason  why 
Shakespeare  should  not  have  been  able  in  1597  to 
draw  from  his  savings  sixty  pounds  wherewith  to 
buy  New  Place.  His  resources  might  well  justify 
his  fellow-townsmen's  opinion  of  his  wealth  in 
1598,  and  suffice  between  1597  and  1599  to  meet 
his  expenses,  in  rebuilding  the  house,  stocking  the 
barns  with  grain,  and  conducting  various  legal 
proceedings.     But,  according  to  tradition ,  he  had  in 

IS 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

the  Earl  of  Southampton  a  wealthy  and  generous 
friend  who  on  one  occasion  gave  him  a  large  gift 
of  money  to  enable  '  him  to  go  through  with  '  a 
purchase  to  which  he  had  a  mind.  A  munificent 
gift,  added  to  professional  gain,  leaves  nothing 
unaccounted  for  in  Shakespeare's  position  before 
1599." 

After  the  date  last  mentioned  the  poet's  for- 
tune grew  apace,  for  he  became  a  shareholder 
in  the  Globe  Theatre  and  also  had  some  financial 
interest  in  the  Blackfriars  Theatre.  In  the  sum 
total,  then,  it  is  estimated  that  during  the  latter 
portion  of  his  life  Shakespeare's  income  amounted 
to  more  than  six  hundred  pounds  a  year.  Indeed, 
a  seventeenth-century  vicar  of  Stratford  remarked 
that  in  his  closing  years  the  poet  "  spent  at  the 
rate  of  a  thousand  a  year,  as  I  have  heard." 
Documents  still  survive  which  afford  ample 
proof  of  the  conviction  of  his  fellow-towns- 
folk that  he  was  a  man  of  substantial  wealth 
from  the  time  when  he  became  the  owner  of 
New  Place. 

Although  he  completed  the  transaction  for  the 
purchase  of  New  Place  in  1602,  Shakespeare  did 

76 


NEW  PLtACE 

not  immediately  sever  his  connexion  with  London 
and  settle  down  in  his  native  town.  He  seems  to 
have  disposed  of  his  interest  in  the  Globe  and 
Blackfriars  theatres  about  161 1,  but  continued  for 
two  or  three  years  longer  to  pay  frequent  visits  to 
the  capital.  No  doubt  he  found  it  difficult  to  bid 
a  final  farewell  to  the  scenes  of  his  triumphs  as 
an  actor  and  playwright.  So  far  as  Stratford  was 
concerned,  he  may  be  safely  credited  with  the 
sentiment  which  Goldsmith  attributed  to  the 
native  of  "sweet  Auburn  "  : 

li  And  as  a  hare,  whom  hounds  and  horns  pursue, 
Pants  to  the  place  from  whence  at  first  he  flew ', 
/  still  had  hopes,  my  long  vexation  past, 
Here  to  return — and  die  at  home  at  last "  ; 

but  the  spell  of  London  was  strong  upon  him  ;  the 
provincialism  of  Stratford  must  have  been  irksome 
at  times  in  contrast  with  the  literary  and  theatrical 
Bohemianism  of  the  capital ;  and  hence  it  is  not 
surprising  that  he  did  not  thoroughly  settle 
down  at  New  Place  until  1614. 

And  at   that   date    he    had   barely   two   years 

77 


<\ 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

to  live.  They  were  spent,  said  an  early  bio- 
grapher, in  ease,  retirement,  and  the  conversation 
of  his  friends.  One  of  his  daughters,  the  elder, 
Susannah,  was  already  the  wife  of  Dr.  John  Hall 
and  the  mother  of  his  only  granddaughter,  Eliza- 
beth ;  the  other,  Judith,  was  married  in  February 
1 61 6  to  Thomas  Quiney,  a  son  of  one  of  the 
poet's  early  friends.  From  legal  records,  and 
deeds  of  conveyance,  and  wills,  and  entries  in  the 
minutes  of  the  Stratford  Corporation,  it  is  possible 
to  catch  a  few  fleeting  glimpses  of  the  master 
of  New  Place  during  the  last  two  or  three  years  of 
his  life  :  he  is  seen  supporting  his  elder  daughter 
in  an  action  prompted  by  a  charge  of  slander,  or 
adding  to  his  real  estate  by  the  purchase  of 
property  in  London,  or  entertaining  a  Puritan 
preacher  at  New  Place,  or  receiving  a  bequest  of 
five  pounds  under  the  will  of  a  friend ;  but  for 
the  greater  part  mystery  broods  over  those  closing 
years. 

For  a  moment,  however,  in  January  1616, 
the  veil  is  lifted.  On  the  sixteenth  day  of  that 
month  the  poet  was  closeted  with  a  solicitor 
engaged    in    the    serious    business    of  arranging 

78 


NEW  PUACE 

the  terms  of  his  will.  That  document,  which 
contains,  apart  from  the  signatures,  the  only 
two  words  in  Shakespeare's  handwriting  known 
to  be  in  existence,  has  been  the  theme  of  endless 
discussion,  and  was  once  described  as  being 
"  absolutely  void  of  the  least  particle  of  that 
spirit  which  animated  our  great  poet."  That 
critic,  as  Halliwell-Phillipps  suggested,  evidently 
expected  to  find  the  will  written  in  blank- 
verse.  "  To  less  exacting  persons  that  document 
is  of  great  interest  for  the  evidence  it  gives  of  the 
poet's  practical  nature  and  the  light  it  throws  on 
his  relations  with  his  family  and  friends.  It 
makes  manifest,  for  example,  that  the  chief  place 
in  his  affections  was  held  by  his  elder  daughter, 
Susannah  Hall,  for  it  was  to  her  he  bequeathed 
the  bulk  of  his  property,  including  '  that  capital 
messuage  or  tenement,  with  the  appurtenances,  in 
Stratford  aforesaid,  called  the  New  Place,  wherein 
I  now  dwell.'  There  were  liberal  bequests,  too, 
to  his  younger  daughter,  Judith,  to  his  sister, 
Joan  Hart,  to  his  three  nephews,  to  his  grand- 
daughter, to  the  poor  of  Stratford,  and  to  seven 
friends  he  left  twenty-six  shillings  and  eightpence 

79 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

each  for  the  purchase  of  memorial  rings.  He 
remembered,  in  short,  everybody  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Anne  Hathaway,  the  wife  of  his  youth  ; 
hence  the  afterthought  of  that  famous  interlinea- 
tion by  which  she  became  entitled  to  his  '  second 
best  bed  with  the  furniture.'  " 

What  did  that  afterthought  portend  ?  Did  it 
mean  that  the  early  love  of  William  Shakespeare 
for  Anne  Hathaway  had  cooled  to  indifference, 
that  husband  and  wife  had  drifted  apart  and  were 
now  linked  to  one  another  by  nothing  more  sub- 
stantial than  that  mockery  of  a  loveless  marriage — 
a  wedding  certificate  ;  or  did  it  imply  that  the  poet 
thought  his  wife  amply  provided  for  by  her  legal 
widow's  dower  and  distrusted  her  ability  to 
take  charge  of  his  estate  ?  Both  theories  have 
had  their  heated  adherents,  and  the  problem 
will  probably  be  discussed  with  undiminished 
warmth  to  the  end  of  time. 

In  support  of  the  estrangement  theory  many 
arguments  have  been  adduced.  Anne  Hathaway 
was  her  husband's  senior  by  some  eight  years, 
and  the  disparity  of  age  has  been  adduced 
as  a  probable  reason  for  the  dying-down  of 
80 


NEW  PL^ACE 

Shakespeare's  love.  Into  some  lines  of  his 
own,  then,  a  personal  significance  has  been 
read  : 

"  Let  still  the  woman  take 
An  elder  than  herself;  so  wears  she  to  himy 
So  sways  she  level  in  her  husband's  heart." 

Again,  not  only  was  the  bequest  of  the  second 
best  bed  an  afterthought,  but  the  will  is  wholly 
barren  of  any  reference  to  the  Hathaway  kindred. 

But  on  the  opposite  count  it  is  claimed  that 
bedsteads  were  elaborate  and  valuable  pieces  of 
furniture  in  the  seventeenth  century,  that  they 
often  figure  in  wills  of  the  period;  and  one  ingenious 
theorist  suggests  that  the  bequest  was  of  that 
identical  bed  which  the  bride's  family  presented  to 
the  couple  on  their  marriage.  It  is  also  argued 
that  the  tradition  that  Shakespeare's  widow  ex- 
pressed a  desire  to  be  buried  in  her  husband's 
grave  is  presumptive  proof  against  the  estrange- 
ment theory. 

Two  of  the  anecdotes  told  of  the  poet  are  of  a 
kind  which  suggest  that  he  may  have  been  guilty 

f  81 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

of  marital    unfaithfulness.     One,    which  was  an 
ale-house  story  in  London  in  1602,  may  be  given 
in  the  words   of  its   first  chronicler  :  "  Upon    a 
time,  when  Burbage  played  Richard  III,  there  was 
a    citizen  grew    so  far  in  liking  with  him,  that 
before  she  went  from    the    play,  she    appointed 
him  to  come  that  night  unto   her  by  the  name 
of  Richard  the  Third.     Shakespeare,  overhearing 
their  conclusion,  went  before,  was  entertained,  and 
at  his  game  ere  Burbage  came.     Then,  message 
being  brought  that  Richard  the  Third  was  at  the 
door,  Shakespeare  caused  return  to  be  made  that 
'  William  the  Conqueror  was  before  Richard  the 
Third.' "     The    other    anecdote     is    that    which 
credits  the  poet  with  the  paternity  of  Sir  William 
D'Avenant,    whose   mother,   a    beautiful   woman 
and  of  "  very  light  report,"  was  the  wife  of  that 
John  D'Avenant  who  kept  the    inn    at   Oxford 
where    Shakespeare    baited    on    his    journey    to 
London.     Such  is  the  sum  of  the   matter ;    the 
discerning  reader  may  be  left  to  draw  his    own 
conclusions. 

But  when  Shakespeare,  in  a  cosy  room  in  New 
Place  on  that  January  day  of  1 6 1 6,  discussed  with 
82 


NEW  PLsACE 

his  solicitor  the  terms  of  his  "last  will  and  testa- 
ment," he  was  nearly  finished  with  all  the  tempta- 
tions to  which  male  flesh  is  heir.  On  that  day,  it 
is  true,  he  was  in  "  perfect  health  and  memory, 
God  be  thanked  "  ;  but  two  months  later  he  was 
taken  with  so  serious  an  illness  that  he  thought 
it  expedient  to  have  the  rough  draft  of  his  will 
revised  and  witnessed  without  further  delay.  And 
a  month  later,  on  April  23,  161 6,  he  passed 
away  in  his  fifty-third  year. 

What  exactlv  was  the  nature  of  the  illness 
which  put  so  untimely  an  end  to  the  life  of  the 
poet  is  another  of  those  mysteries  which  enshroud 
so  much  of  his  career.  The  only  account  which 
has  come  down  to  us  was  penned  some  fifty-six 
years  after  the  dramatist's  death  by  the  vicar  of 
Stratford,  who  made  this  brief  entry  in  his  diary  : 
"  Shakespeare,  Drayton,  and  Ben  Jonson  had  a 
merry  meeting,  and  it  seems  drank  too  hard,  for 
Shakespeare  died  of  a  fever  there  contracted." 
On  this  story,  a  legend  in  itself,  realistic  details 
have  been  embroidered,  such  as  that  the  poet 
"  tumbled  into  a  ditch  on  his  way  home,  and  died 
there."     Sir  Sidney  Lee  decides  that  the  tales  of 

83 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Shakespeare's  achievements  as  a  hard  drinker 
"  may  be  dismissed  as  unproven  "  ;  but  even  so 
stout  a  hero-worshipper  as  Halliwell-Phillipps 
was  inclined  to  accept  the  "  merry  meeting ': 
legend,  with  extenuating  circumstances. 

Briefly  put,  Halliwell-Phillipps  accounted  for 
the  poet's  early  death  by  a  conjunction  of  strong 
drink  and  strong  odours.     "  The   cause   of  the 
malady,"    he   noted,   "  then   attributed   to  undue 
festivity,  would  now  be  readily  discernible  in  the 
wretched  sanitary  conditions  surrounding  his  resi- 
dence.    If    truth,    and    not    romance,    is    to    be 
invoked,  were  there  the  woodbine  and  sweet  honey- 
/  suckle  within  reach  of  the  poet's  death-bed,  their 
/  fragrance  would  have  been   neutralized  by  their 
vicinity    to   middens,   fetid    water-courses,    mud- 
[D  walls,   and  piggeries."     And   in  support  of  that 

indictment  the  same  patient  student  produced  a 
series  of  entries  from  the  town  records  which 
present  an  alarming  and  malodorous  picture  of 
the  filthy  condition  of  Chapel  Lane  in  days 
anterior  and  posterior  to  the  poet's  lifetime.  The 
references  to  gutter  and  muck  and  dunghills  and 
fetid  ditches  seem  to  exhale  the  concentrated 
84 


NEW  PL^CE 

essence  of  every  vile  effluvium  known  to  man,  and 
suggest  a  hot-bed  of  virulent  typhus.     And    it 
must  be  remembered  that  Chapel  Lane  ran  along- 
side Shakespeare's  house  and  garden  at  New  Place. 
Some  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  lane,  and  probably 
the  poet  among  the  number,  protested  vigorously 
to   the   corporation  in    1613    against    a    pending 
addition  to  their  many  offensive  nuisances  ;  and 
even  so  late  as  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
the  thoroughfare  was  still  one  of  the  dirtiest  i 
a  town  not  remarkable  for  cleanliness^y'lt  may 
well  have  been,   then,  that  the  surroundings   of 
New   Place,  now  so  well  kept  and  verdant   and 
fragrant,     were     accountable    for    Shakespeare's 
death. 

Those  pilgrims  who  are  curious  enough  to  wish 
to  walk  over  the  vacant  site  of  the  poet's  resi- 
dence, at  the  cost  of  the  sixpenny  toll  above 
mentioned,  are  given  access  to  it  through  that 
picturesque  building  which  borders  it  on  the 
north  known  as  Nash's  House.  In  that  ancient 
structure,  which  was  once  the  home  of  Shake- 
speare's granddaughter,  are  preserved  some 
curious   relics    of   Elizabethan    times.     But   the 

85 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

chief  interest  of  the  house,  apart  from  its  outlook 
on  the  New  Place  foundations,  is  that  its  oak- 
beamed  ceilings  and  its  spacious  chimney-nooks 
are  potent  aids  to  the  imagination  in  repic- 
turing  the  domestic  environments  amid  which 
Stratford's  most  famous  son  spent  his  last  peace- 
ful years. 


86 


CHAPTER  III  :  The  Church 

BY  an  inversion  which  is  an  excellent 
example  of  the  modern  spirit,  the 
twentieth-century  pilgrim  to  Stratford- 
on-Avon  usually  visits  last  that  shrine  which 
early  devotees  made  the  sole  object  of  their  quest. 
Washington  Irving  and  Hawthorne,  as  has  been 
remarked,  ignored  New  Place  and  went  straight 
to  the  church  from  the  Henley  Street  cottage  ; 
Dugdale  and  other  forerunners  were  interested 
only  in  the  poet's  grave.  The  modern  order  of 
pilgrimage  is  the  most  seemly,  just  as  it  is  also  a 
tribute  to  our  greater  knowledge  of  Shakespeare's 
life.  The  natural  sequence  is  surely  that  which 
takes  the  birthplace  first,  Newf  Place  second,  and 
the  grave  last. 

Many  pens  have  attempted  word-pictures  of 
Holy  Trinity  Church,  but  in  the  entire  gallery 
pride  of  place  may  still  be  given  to  those  achieved 
by  Irving  and  Hawthorne.  "  A  large  and 
venerable  pile,"  Irving  described  it,  "mouldering 
with  age,  but  richly   ornamented.      It   stands  on 

87 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

the  banks  of  the  Avon,  on  an  embowered  point, 
and  separated  by  adjoining  gardens  from  the 
suburbs  of  the  town.  Its  situation  is  quiet  and 
retired  ;  the  river  runs  murmuring  at  the  foot  of 
the  churchyard,  and  the  elms  which  grow  upon 
its  banks  droop  their  branches  into  its  clear 
bosom.  An  avenue  of  limes,  the  boughs  of 
which  are  curiously  interlaced,  so  as  to  form  in 
summer  an  arched  way  of  foliage,  leads  up  from 
the  gate  of  the  yard  to  the  church  porch.  The 
graves  are  overgrown  with  grass  ;  the  grey  tomb- 
stones, some  of  them  nearly  sunk  into  the  earth, 
are  half-covered  with  moss,  which  has  likewise 
tinted  the  reverend  old  buildings.  Small  birds 
have  built  their  nests  among  the  cornices  and 
fissures  of  the  walls,  and  keep  up  a  continual 
flutter  and  chirping ;  and  rooks  are  sailing  and 
cawing  about  its  lofty  grey  spire." 

Hawthorne,  too,  was  not  less  happy  in  limning 
the  outward  aspect  of  the  poet's  resting-place. 
"  The  appearance  of  the  church  is  most  venerable 
and  beautiful,  standing  amid  a  great  green  shadow 
of  lime-trees,  above  which  rises  the  spire,  while 
the  Gothic  battlements  and  buttresses  and  vast 
88 


THE    CHURCH 

arched  windows  are  obscurely  seen  through  the 
boughs.  The  Avon  loiters  past  the  churchyard, 
an  exceedingly  sluggish  river,  which  might  seem 
to  have  been  considering  which  way  it  should 
flow  ever  since  Shakespeare  left  ofF  paddling  in  it 
and  gathering  the  large  forget-me-nots  that  grow 
among  its  flags  and  water-weeds." 

That  the  Avon  should  have  been  pressed  into  the 
service  of  the  eulogists  of  the  poet  is  a  natural  con- 
sequence of  the  close  association  of  that  charming 
river  with  the  beginning  and  end  of  his  wonderful 
career.  Garrick,  in  the  facile  verse  which  he 
indited  in  connexion  with  his  "  Jubilee,"  pro- 
phesied that  not  even  the  Thames  would  "more 
harmonious  flow  in  song,"  and  expressed  the 
aspiration 

"  Ever  may  thy  stream 
Of  tuneful  numbers  be  the  darling  theme.,J 

And  then  he  piped  his  "  shepherd's  feeble  notes  " 
to  the  following  effect,  excusing  the  weakness  of 
his  numbers  by  the  warmth  of  his  zeal  : 


89 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

"  Thou  soft-flowing  Avon,  by  thy  silver  stream 
Of  things  more  than  mortal,  sweet  Shakespeare  would 

dream, 
The  Fairies  by  moonlight  dance  round  his  green  bed. 
For  hallowed  the  turj  is  which  pillow 'd  his  head. 

"  The  love-stricken  maiden,  the  soft-sighing  swain 
Here  rove  without  danger,  and  sigh  without  pain  ; 
The  sweet  bud  of  beauty,  no  blight  shall  here  dread, 
For  hallow  'd  the  turf  is  which  pillow 'd  his  head. 

"  Here  youth  shall  be  fam  d  for  their  love  and  their 
truth, 
And  cheerful  old  age  feel  the  spirit  of  youth  ; 
For  the  raptures  of  fancy  here  poets  shall  tread, 
For  hallow  d  the  turf  is  which  pillow ' d  his  head. 


a 


Flow  on,  silver  Avon,  in  song  ever  flow, 
Be  the  swans  on  thy  bosom  still  whiter  than  snow, 
Ever  full  be  thy  stream,  like  his  fame  may  it  spread, 
And   the    turf  ever   hallow V  which   pillow 'd   his 
heady 


Garrick    was    neither    the    first   nor  the    most 
90 


THE    CHURCH 

tuneful  singer  to  link  the  praise  of  Shakespeare 
with  his  native  stream.  There  was  Ben  Jonson, 
for  example,  with  his 

"  Sweet  swan  of  Avon  I      What  a  sight  it  were 
To  see  thee  in  our  water  yet  appear, 
And  make  those  flights  upon  the  banks  of  Thames, 
That  so  did  take  Eliza,  and  our  James. ' 

And  Milton  must  not  be  forgotten,  for  if  he 
ignored  Shakespeare's  river  in  his  lofty  lines  he 
must  surely  have  had  the  poet's  spired  church  in 
mind  when  he  asked  : 

"  What    needs    my    Shakespeare   for    his    honoured 
bones 
The  labour  of  an  age  in  piled  stones  ? 
Or  that  his  hallowed  reliaues  should  be  hid 
Under  a  star-ypointing  pyramid  ?  " 

But  in  this  anthology  of  Shakespeare  and  the 
Avon  the  mid-eighteenth  century  produced  a 
poem  which  is  less  remembered  than  it  deserves. 

9i 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRzATFORD 

Entitled  "  The  Tomb  of  Shakespeare  :  a  Vision," 
it  was  written  in  1755  Dv  Jonn  Gilbert  Cooper,  a 
minor  poet  who  often  achieved  lines  which  would 
grace  the  most  felicitous  work  of  his  major 
confreres.  Obviously  his  poem  owed  much  to  the 
form  and  spirit  of  Gray's  famous  "  Elegy,"  and 
some  lines  might  be  indicted  on  the  score  of  close 
imitation,  yet  the  conception  is  so  original  to  the 
author  and  the  execution  so  happy  that  the  poet's 
indebtedness  to  his  model  may  be  condoned.  As 
in  a  dream,  then,  Cooper  imagined  his  soul 
emancipated  from  his  body. 

"  Through  fields  of  air ;  methought,  I  took  my  flight, 
Through  every  clime,  o'er  every  region  pass 'd, 
No  paradise  or  ruin  ''scaped  my  sight, 
Hesperian  garden,  or  Cimmerian  waste. 


"  On  Avons  banks  I  lit,  whose  streams  appear 

To   wind  with    eddies  fond  round  Shakespeare 's 
tomb, 
The  year  s  first  feattiry  songsters  warble  near, 
And  vi  lets  breathe,  and  earliest  roses  bloom. 
92 


THE    CHURCH 

"Here  Fancy  sat,  (her  dewy  fingers  cold 

Decking   with  flowerets    fresh    tfi     unsullied 
sod), 
And   batli  d  with     tears    the    sad    sepulchral 
mold, 
Her  fav  rite  offsprings  long  and  last  abode. 


"  l  Ah  !  what  avails,'  she  cryd,  ca  Poet's  name  ? 
Ah  !  what  avails  tli   immortalizing  breath 
To  snatch  from  dumb  Oblivion  other  s  fame? 
My  darling  child  here  lies  a  prey  to  Death  I 

"  l  Let  gentle  Otway,  white-rob" d  Pity's  priest, 
From  grief  domestic  teach  the  tears  to  flow, 
Or  Southern  captivate  tti  impassion  d  breast 
With  heart-felt  sighs  and  sympathy  of  woe. 


«  <  por  noi  iq  i]iese  his  genius  was  confind, 

Nature  and  I  each  tuneful  powW  had  given, 
Poetic  transports  of  the  madding  mind, 

And  the   wing  d  words    that   waft   the   soul  to 
heaven : 

93 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

"  *  The  fiery  glance  of  tli   intellectual  eye, 
Piercing  all  objects  of  creation  s  store, 
Which  on  this  world's  extended  surface  lie  ; 
And  plastic  thought  that  still  created  more  !  ' 

"  '  0  grant  J  with  eager  rapture  I  reply  d, 

i  Grant  me,  great  goddess  of  the  changeful  eye, 
To  view  each  Being  in  poetic  pride, 
To  whom  thy  son  gave  immortality. y  " 

Nor  did  the  poet  appeal  in  vain.  At  the  bidding 
of  Fancy  and  in  answer  to  the  waving  of  her 
"  mystic  rod,"  first  Ariel,  and  then  Caliban,  and 
anon  the  elfin  sprites  of  Oberon's  realm  and 
the  witches  of  "  Macbeth "  and  the  ghosts  of 
"  Richard  III "  came  from  the  unseen  to  do 
honour  to  the  resting-place  of  their  creator.  And 
often  in  the  years  that  have  intervened  that 
imaginary  pageant  has  been  repeated,  for  few  can 
have  visited  Shakespeare's  grave  unaccompanied 
by  the  great  cloud  of  witnesses  which  owes  its 
existence  to  his  magic  pen.  Longfellow  seems 
to  have  been  an  exception,  for  in  his  vision  of 
the  Avon  one  figure  dominated  the  scene  : 
94 


THE    CHURCH 

"  Flow  oft)  sweet  river  I  like  his  verse 
Who  lies  beneath  this  sculptured  hearse ; 
Nor  wait  beside  the  churchyard  wall 
For  him  who  cannot  hear  thy  call. 


a 


I  see  him  by  thy  shallow  edge 
JVading  knee-deep  amid  the  sedge  ; 
And  led  in  thought,  as  if  thy  stream 
Were  the  swift  river  of  a  dream. 


"  He  wonders  whitherward  it  flows  ; 
And  fain  would  follow  where  it  goes, 
To  the  wide  world,  that  shall  ere  long 
Be  filed  with  his  melodious  song. 


u 


Flow  on,  fair  stream  !     That  dream  is  o'er  ; 
He  stands  upon  another  shore  ; 
A  vaster  river  near  him  flows, 
And  still  he  follows  where  it  goes." 


With  a  poetic  licence  which  in  that  instance 
might  easily  have  given  rise  to  another  bewilder- 
ing legend,  Garrick's  flowing  verse  must  have 
conveyed    the   impression    that    Shakespeare    was 

95 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

buried  in  the  graveyard  of  Holy  Trinity  Church. 
And  succeeding  poets  have  done  not  a  little  to 
foster  that  fiction,  impelled  thereto,  no  doubt,  by 
the  desire  to  make  the  adjacent  Avon  play  a 
picturesque  part  in  their  lines. 

Of  course,  the  fact  is  that  Shakespeare's  grave 
is  in  the  chancel  of  that  church,  and  even  Irving, 
much  less  Hawthorne,  was  well  aware  that  such 
was  the  case.     During  the  forty  odd  years,  too, 
which    separated    the    visits    of    the    American 
pilgrims  a  notable  change  had  taken  place  with 
regard  to  the  relative  importance  of  the  Stratford 
shrines.     At  the  time  of  Irving's  pilgrimage  the 
church  was  kept  locked  up,  for  does  he  not  tell 
how  he  had  to  accompany  the  sexton  Edmonds  to 
his  home  to  fetch  the  key  ?     Hawthorne,  on  the 
contrary,  found  himself  waylaid  at  the  outer  gate 
by    "  an    old    man    in    small-clothes "    who,    in 
anticipation  of  that  sixpenny  fee  so  dear  to  every 
Stratfordian,  marched  before  him  to   the  porch 
and  rapped  on  the  door.     "  I  could  have  done  it 
quite  as  effectually  for  myself,"  thought  Haw- 
thorne ;    "  but  it   seems   the   old  people  of  the 
neighbourhood  haunt   about  the  churchyard,  in 
96 


HOLY  TRINITY   CHURCH 


THE   CHURCH 

spite  of  the  frowns  and  remonstrances  of  the 
sexton,  who  grudges  them  the  half-eleemosynary 
sixpence  which  they  sometimes  get  from  visitors." 
By  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  then,  there  was 
no  waiting  for  the  fetching  of  the  key  ;  the 
monetary  value  of  Shakespeare's  tomb  had  been 
realized  and  had  even  created  an  annoying  type 
of  middleman. 

In  describing  the  outward  appearance  of  the 
church  each  of  the  American  essayists  used  the 
word  "  venerable " ;  the  same  adjective  would 
have  been  as  appropriate  from  the  pen  of  any 
writer  who  had  attempted  a  word-picture  of  the 
building  on  that  April  day  of  1616  when  Shake- 
speare was  laid  to  rest  within  its  walls. 

For  even  three  hundred  years  ago  Holy  Trinity 
Church  was  already  a  venerable  building.  To 
date  from  William  the  Conqueror,  with  whom 
more  founders  of  noble  families  "  came  over  " 
to  England  than  progenitors  of  American  "good 
families'1  crossed  to  New  England  on  the 
Mayflower,  is  often  a  dubious  patent  of  antiquity  ; 
but  in  the  case  of  Shakespeare's  church  there  is 
no  disputing  the  evidence  of  Domesday  Book  to 

c  97 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

the  effect  that  in  1086  Stratford  could  boast  of  a 
church  and  a  mill.  Whether  the  present  mill, 
which  is  close  to  the  church,  occupies  the  site  of 
that  mentioned  in  William's  Survey  is  of  no 
present  importance ;  but  it  is  of  moment  to 
recall  that,  in  the  opinion  of  conservative  anti- 
quaries, the  existing  church  not  only  stands  upon 
the  site  of  the  Domesday  building,  but  actually 
includes  portions  of  its  walls.  At  the  time  of 
Shakespeare's  burial,  then,  some  parts  of  the 
sacred  edifice  had  weathered  the  summers  and 
winters  of  more  than  five  centuries. 

So  many  alterations  have  been  made  in  the 
fabric  in  modern  times  that  it  would  require  the 
trained  eye  of  an  antiquarian  architect  to  identify 
such  stones  as  may  still  remain  of  the  Domesday 
structure,  but  there  are  several  parts  of  the 
church  which  are  still  their  own  evidence  of 
respectable  antiquity.  There  is  the  south  aisle, 
for  example,  which  dates  from  about  the  year 
1332.  Part  of  the  building  in  which  Shakespeare 
was  buried  belongs  to  the  latter  half  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  had  been  completed 
in    its     present    form    nearly    a    hundred    and 

98 


THE    CHURCH 

fifty  years  before  it  received  its  most  illustrious 
sleeper* 

Many  hues,  then,  of  what  Ruskin  called  the 
golden  stair  of  time  had  touched  the  walls  of 
Holy  Trinity  Church  before  that  April  day  in 
1 6 1 6  which  is  the  most  memorable  day  in  its 
annals.  /No  record  of  the  ceremony  of  Shake-  \ 
speare's  obsequies  has  survived.  In  the  ancient 
parish  register  there  is  a  brief  and  conventional  /  '/ 
entry  setting  forth  the  fact  of  his  burial  on  April 
25,  161 6;  but  that  is  all.  And  yet  how  many 
pens  were  then  busy  in  England,  Ben  Jonson's 
chief  of  all,  which  could  have  done  justice  to  that, 
solemn  scene  I 

But  that  notable  sepulture  in  Holy  Trinity 
Church  was  to  find  a  chronicler  in  modern  days. 
Hence  that  sketch  of  "  Shakespeare's  Funeral  ' 
which  Sir  Edward  Hamley  outlined  with  such 
loving  care  and  sympathy.  It  is  an  imaginary 
picture,  of  course,  and  far  from  flawless  to  the 
eye  which  is  keen  to  detect  anachronisms,  but  it 
is  so  suffused  with  the  atmosphere  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  that  its  violation  of  fact  is 
condoned  by  its  faithfulness  of  spirit. 

99 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

As  representative,  then,  of  the  great  world  of 
London,  Sir  Edward  introduces  the  persons  of 
the  poet  Drayton  and  a  son  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
making  their  visit  to  Stratford  coincide  with 
Shakespeare's  burial  day.  They  talk  of  the  poet 
in  the  taproom  of  the  Falcon  Tavern,  interview 
Kit  Sly,  meet  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  of  Charlecote, 
watch  the  funeral  procession  on  its  way  to  the 
grave,  and  mingle  with  the  mourners  inside  the 
church.  They  listen,  too,  to  the  funeral  sermon, 
which,  with  a  bold  flight  of  the  imagination,  Sir 
Edward  credits  to  that  Puritan  preacher  who  had 
been  a  guest  at  New  Place. 

"  So,  friends,"  that  austere  divine  is  made  to 
say  of  the  dead  poet,  "  having  essayed  to  draw 
from  the  presence  of  death  in  our  midst  some 
matter  for  edification,  I  will  speak  a  word  of  this 
particular  brother  who  hath  departed,  dwelling, 
as  is  at  these  seasons  the  custom,  chiefly  on  what 
may  do  him  grace,  and  serve  to  sweeten  his 
memory  in  the  nostrils  of  those  whom  he  hath 
left  still  in  the  bonds  of  the  flesh.  And  first, 
of  the  fountain  of  his  charities — it  hath  been 
known  in  Stratford  for  a  perennial  spring, 
ioo 


THE    CHURCH 

abundant  in  refreshment  to  the  poor,  and  in 
counsel  and  all  good  offices  to  those  who  needed 
continuance  of  another  kind  ;  and  if  (as  must  be 
said  were  a  man  to  speak  truly)  he  ever  regarded 
necessity  more  than  deserving,  and  inquired  not 
over  closely  into  the  way  of  life  of  those  he 
relieved — nay,  would  ofttimes  succour  and 
comfort  the  godless  no  less  than  the  godly,  and 
bestow  his  bounty  where  it  was  like  to  be 
ill-spent — yet  is  that  to  be  accounted  better 
than  the  withholding  altogether  of  alms,  as  some 
use.  Next,  of  his  excellent  charity  of  another 
sort,  I  mean  the  brotherly  relation  he  held  with 
all  conditions  of  men  ;  it  hath  been  noted  among 
you  that  he,  who  was  used  elsewhere  to  consort 
with  the  great,  and  hath  been  favoured  even  of 
princes,  would  yet  converse  with  the  lowly  on  a 
general  level  of  goodwill,  as  if  the  only  apparel 
he  took  thought  of  were  the  skin  we  are  all  born 
with  ;  for  which,  indeed,  he  had  a  great  ensample. 
And,  again,  he  hath  ever  gone  among  his  fellows 
with  a  cheerful  spirit,  so  that  his  presence  hath 
been  as  wine  among  friends,  and  as  oil  among 
make-bates.     And  though  I  dare  not  say  that  he 

IOI 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

inclined  of  preference  to  the  conversation  of  the 
godly,  nor  could  be  counted  of  the  fellowship  of 
saints,  nor  even  a  favourer  of  them,  yet  have  I 
ever  found  him  apt  at  serious  converse,  courteous 
in  bearing,  weighty  in  reply,  and  of  unshakable 
serenity  when  I  have  adventured  to  press  the 
truth  on  him  somewhat  instantly ;  inasmuch,  that 
I,  whose  vocation  'tis  to  battle  for  the  truth, 
have  myself,  ere  now,  been  sore  put  to  it  to  hold 
mine  own,  and  found  me  in  straits  to  oppose  him, 
so  nimble  was  his  wit  ;  though  I  doubt  not  that 
(the  clear  sight  being  with  me)  I  should,  with 
time  for  recollection,  have  had  vouchsafed  to  me 
the  wherewithal  to  give  him  sufficient  answer. 
And  it  hath,  at  these  times,  seemed  to  me  that 
he  was  a  goodly  vessel  full  of  merchandise,  yet 
driven  by  the  wind  apart  from  the  port  where 
alone  her  cargo  could  be  bartered  for  that  which 
is  bread  ;  and  1  have  travailed  over  him  with  a 
sore  travail ;  for  I  have  hardly  doubted  that,  with 
such  gifts,  he  might,  had  it  been  so  ordered,  have 
justly  aspired  to  be  chief  magistrate  of  your 
town,  or  even  to  serve  you  in  parliament ;  or 
again,  with  diligent  study  and  prayer,  to  become 
102 


THE    CHURCH 

a  preacher  of  weight,  and  have  struck  in  the 
pulpit  a  good  stroke  for  God's  honour  and  the 
Devil's  discomfiture.  But,  alas  !  it  is  known  to 
all  of  you,  and  I  dare  not  dissemble  it,  that  his 
calling  hath  been  one  that  delighteth  the  carnal- 
minded,  and  profiteth  the  idle,  and  maketh  the 
godly  sad  of  heart ;  while,  as  for  his  talent,  it 
hath  been  put  out  to  use  where  the  only 
return  is  the  praise  which  fleeteth  as  the  bubble 
on  the  stream,  and  the  repute  which  perisheth  as 
the  leaves  of  autumn;  for  the  making  of  rhymes 
and  verses  which  flatter  the  ear,  and  the  art  of 
representing  the  vain  shows  of  things,  howe'er 
skilfully  practised  (and  I  profess  not  to  have  that 
acquaintance  with  the  writings  called  plays,  nor 
poems  other  than  godly  hymns,  to  judge  his 
handiwork),  cannot  be  held  profitable  for  him 
that  writes  nor  him  that  hears  them.  And 
therefore,  whatsoe'er  of  wit  and  sense  they  may 
contain  must  be  accounted  as  water  poured  out 
on  the  sand,  which,  better  bestowed,  might  have 
solaced  the  thirsty,  and  nourished  the  herbs  and 
the  fruits,  whereof  many  would  have  eaten  and 
been    strengthened.       But    though    I    may    not 

103 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

altogether  hold  my  peace  on  these  matters,  yet 
am  I  loath  to  dwell  on  them  at  this  time ;  rather 
would  I  point  to  the  hope  that  our  departed 
brother  had,  in  the  soberer  life  he  of  late  led 
among  you,  put  aside  such  toys  as  unworthy,  and 
given  us  warrant  to  forget  in  him  their  author, 
and,  moreover,  to  believe  that,  had  he  been 
spared  unto  us,  he  would  have  removed  himself 
further,  year  by  year,  from  such  vanities  and 
lightnesses  of  his  youth,  until,  haply,  by  the 
example  of  a  godly  household,  and  the  ministra- 
tions of  faithful  expounders  of  God's  Word, 
he  should  have  attained  even  to  the  perfect 
day." 

Such  was  Shakespeare's  funeral  sermon  as  the 
posthumous  reporter  imagined  it  to  have  been, 
and  it  is  highly  probable  that  the  sentences  just 
quoted  are  an  approximately  faithful  reflection  of 
the  sentiments  which  the  poet's  death  inspired  in 
the  minds  of  many  of  his  Stratford  contemporaries. 
But  Sir  Edward  Hamley  did  not  content  himself 
with  representing  the  Puritan  view  of  Shake- 
speare's career.  On  their  walk  back  to  New 
Place  after  the  funeral  young  Raleigh  and  the 
104 


THE    CHURCH 

poet  Drayton  fell  into  converse  on  the  discourse 
to  which  they  had  just  listened,  and  the  former 
hotly  exclaimed  that  he  had  great  difficulty  in 
refraining  from  answering  the  preacher  even  in 
church.  "  Here  was  a  man,"  he  declared,  "  who, 
having  the  vision  of  a  mole,  mistook  Parnassus  for 
a  molehill,  and  went  about  to  measure  it  with  his 
ell-wand,  and  even  thought  to  do  men  service 
by  persuading  them  that  the  golden  lights  and 
purple  shadows  of  the  mountain,  its  fountains  and 
dells,  the  forests  that  clothe  it,  the  clouds  that 
crown  it,  and  the  Muses  that  make  it  their 
haunt,  are  all  vain  illusions  together." 

But  Drayton,  with  the  more  balanced  vision  of 
an  older  man,  reminded  his  youthful  companion 
that  the  perception  of  greatness  was  a  slow 
growth.  "  And  thus,"  he  added,  "  will  it  be 
with  the  fame  of  Shakespeare,  who  had  so  much 
in  common  with  the  common  men  that  they 
accounted  him  one  of  themselves,  as  Mercury 
passed  among  herdsmen  for  a  herdsman,  and 
Apollo  among  shepherds  for  a  shepherd." 

If  some  forgotten  Puritan  divine  did  actually 
debate    the    question    of   Shakespeare's    religious 

105 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

faith  over  the  open  grave  of  the  poet  in  Stratford 
Church  nigh  three  hundred  years  ago,  he  merely 
anticipated  that  barren  discussion  which  has 
cropped  up  so  frequently  in  modern  times.  As 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  has  remarked,  so  great  is  the 
power  of  the  poet's  name  to  stimulate  unbridled 
curiosity  that  whole  columns  have  been  filled  with 
the  discussion  of  questions  which,  even  if  he  were 
now  alive,  we  could  not  answer.  Such  questions 
as,  Was  he  a  Christian  ?  And,  if  so,  a  Roman 
Catholic  or  a  Protestant  ?  Or  had  he  any  re- 
ligious faith  at  all  ?  All  we  know  is  that  he  was 
baptized,  and  had  his  children  baptized,  according 
to  the  rites  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  that 
his  only  son  Hamnet  and  he  himself  were  laid 
to  rest  with  the  burial  service  of  that  Church. 
Nothing  can  be  inferred  from  the  exordium  of  his 
will :  "  I  comend  my  soule  into  the  handes  of 
God  my  Creator,  hoping  and  assuredlie  believing, 
through  thonelie  merittes  of  Jesus  Christe  my 
Saviour,  to  be  made  partaker  of  lyfe  everlastinge  "  ; 
for  that  was  a  stereotyped  form  which  had  no 
value  as  a  personal  confession  of  faith  ;  and  his 
most  sympathetic  biographer  has  affirmed  that  it 
106 


THE    CHURCH 

cannot  be  claimed  that  he  was  "  a  deep  student  of 
the  Bible."  And  as  for  his  writings,  they  are  dis- 
tinguished for  nothing  so  much  as  their  "  grand 
impersonality."  For,  as  Lowell  asked,  what  has 
he  told  us  of  himself?  "  If  he  had  sorrows,  he  has 
made  them  the  woof  of  everlasting  consolation  to 
his  kind  ;  and  if,  as  poets  are  wont  to  whine,  the 
outward  world  was  cold  to  him,  its  biting  air  did 
but  trace  itself  in  loveliest  frostwork  of  fancy  on 
the  many  windows  of  that  self-centred  and  cheer- 
ful soul." 

Fifty  years  ago  the  poet's  devotees  were  startled 
by  the  announcement  that  the  burial-place  and 
gravestone  had  been  discovered  of  a  man  who 
was  one  of  the  pall-bearers  at  Shakespeare's 
funeral.  This  was,  indeed,  a  momentous  event  ; 
it  suggested  that  it  might  yet  be  possible  to 
unearth  new  and  important  details  of  the  poet's 
closing  years.  This  seemed  all  the  more  probable 
because  about  the  same  time  the  writer  of  an 
article  bearing  the  title  of  "  Shakespeare  :  Was 
he  a  Christian  ? ' '  declared  that  an  old  lady,  a 
native  of  Stratford,  who  had  been  dead  some  fifty 
years,   was  wont  to  assert  that  her  grandmother 

107 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

was  present  at  the  poet's  funeral  sermon,  that  the 
congregation  was  "  very  large  and  very  serious," 
and  that  the  preacher  had  concluded  with  the 
pious  aspiration,  "Would  to  God  he  had  been  a 
divine !" — much  in  the  manner  of  the  pulpit  orator 
whose  imaginary  discourse  has  been  cited  above. 

But  to  return  to  Shakespeare's  pall-bearer. 
There  had  been  found  in  the  old  burial-ground 
of  Fredericksburg,  Virginia — so  ran  the  announce- 
ment of  fifty  years  ago — an  ancient  slab  of  sand- 
stone engraved  with  the  thrilling  inscription : 
"  Here  lies  the  body  of  Edward  Helder,  prac- 
titioner in  physic  and  chirurgery.  Born  in  Bed- 
fordshire, England,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
1542.  Was  contemporary  with  and  one  of  the 
pall-bearers  to  the  body  of  William  Shakespeare. 
After  a  brief  illness  his  spirit  ascended  in  the 
year  of  our  Lord  16 18,  aged  76."  Nor  was  that 
the  whole  of  the  story.  As  proof  that  the  stone 
had  been  a  "  feature  ' '  of  the  district  for  many 
years,  appeal  was  made  to  the  columns  of  the  local 
newspaper,  the  Fredericksburg  Gazette,  for  the 
year  1784,  in  which  the  following  lines  were 
printed : 
108 


THE    CHURCH 

"  For  in  the  churchyard  at  Fredericksburg 
Juliet  seemed  to  lovet 
Hamlet  mused,  and  old  Lear  fell, 
Beatrice  laughed,  and  Ariel 
Gleamed  through  the  skies  above — 
As  here,  beneath  this  stone, 
Lay  in  his  narrow  hall, 
He  who  before  had  borne  the  pall 
At  mighty  Shakespeare 's  funeral '." 

For  the  moment,  then,  it  looked  as  though  the 
name  of  Edward  Helder,  M.D.,  had  had  great- 
ness thrust  upon  it,  and  that  henceforth  it  would 
have  to  be  added  to  the  select  roll  of  Shakespeare's 
friends.  And  yet  no  sooner  had  the  Fredericks- 
burg epitaph  been  announced  to  the  world  than 
cold  scepticism  began  to  scrutinize  it  with  a 
critical  eye.  "I  am  suspicious  of  Americans,'' 
said  one  antiquary,  "  even  when  their  stories  seem 
to  elucidate  the  funeral  of  Shakespeare."  And 
he  looked  askance  at  the  Fredericksburg  epitaph 
because  it  was  hardly  probable  that  Dr.  Helder 
should  have  gone  to  settle  in  America  in  his 
seventy-fourth  year.   Anot  her  disbeliever  grounded 

109 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

his  doubts  on  philology  ;  the  phraseology  of  the 
epitaph  was  too  modern  to  his  taste,  the  word 
"  contemporary,"  for  example,  being  of  later 
coinage.  He  was  afraid,  in  short,  that  the  in- 
scription was  an  exercise  of  the  inventive  faculty 
by  "  some  facetious  antiquary  of  the  *  Old 
Dominion.' " 

And  there  the  question  remained  for  a  decade, 
suspended,  like  Mahomet's  coffin,  between  the 
realms  of  faith  and  incredulity.  Some  twelve 
years  later  Dr.  Helder  popped  up  again,  only  to 
be  assaulted  by  another  sceptic,  who  tried  to  lay 
his  ghost  by  declaring  him  a  figment  of  "  Yankee 
imagination."  At  last,  a  quarter  of  a  century 
after  the  good  doctor  from  Bedfordshire  had  been 
dragged  into  publicity,  an  American,  Moncure 
D.  Conway,  took  a  hand  in  settling  the  pretensions 
of  the  individual  whom  he  characterized  as 
Shakespeare's  Jack-in-the-box.  He  went  to  the 
root  of  the  matter  by  acquiring  possession  of  the 
much-discussed  doctor's  gravestone,  and  found 
that  the  epitaph  made  no  reference  whatever  to 
Shakespeare  or  his  pall-bearer  ! 

In  its  general  aspect  the  interior  of  Stratford 
no 


"THE    CHURCH 

Church  is  practically  unchanged  since  Washington 
Irving  noted  that  its  architecture  and  embellish- 
ments were  superior  to  those  of  most  country- 
churches,  that  the  place  is  "  solemn  and  sepul- 
chral," and  that  "  tall  elms  wave  before  the 
pointed  windows,  and  the  Avon,  which  runs  at  a 
short  distance  from  the  walls,  keeps  up  a  low 
perpetual  murmur."  The  gentle  author  of  the 
"  Sketch-Book "  did  not  observe  that  there  was 
anything  remarkable  about  the  position  of  the 
graves  occupied  by  Shakespeare  and  his  kindred  ; 
but  the  quick  and  observant  eye  of  Hawthorne 
noted  that  "  the  poet  and  his  family  are  in  pos- 
session of  what  may  be  considered  the  very  best 
burial-places  that  the  church  affords."  Such  is 
the  case,  for  Shakespeare  and  his  relatives  lie  in  a 
row  just  within  the  altar-rails  of  the  chancel. 

There  was  a  reason  for  that  pre-eminence 
which  the  American  pilgrims  did  not  know.  In 
1605  Shakespeare  purchased  a  thirty-one  years' 
lease  of  the  tithes  of  Stratford,  and  that  transac- 
tion, in  addition  to  making  him  one  of  the  Jay- 
rectors,  gave  him  the  right  of  interment  in  the 
chancel.     It  was  not  pride,  then,  but  the  automatic 

1 1 1 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

working  of  a  legal  custom  which  was  responsible 
for  the  poet  being  buried  in  the  most  conspicuous 
part  of  the  church.  Thus  it  transpired  that  the 
friend  who  urged  him  to  purchase  the  tithes  was 
the  unwitting  cause  of  Shakespeare's  grave  occupy- 
ing that  super-eminence  which  would  be  its  right 
in  any  temple  of  the  illustrious  dead. 

There,  then,  just  within  the  altar-rails,  and  one 
space  removed  from  the  north  wall  of  the  chancel, 
lies  that  simple  slab  of  stone  on  which  are  incised 
the  famous  admonitory  lines  : 

"  Good  frend  for  Jesus  sake  f orb  eare, 
To  digg  the  dust  enchased  heare  : 
Bleste  be  ye  man  yt  spares  thes  stones, 
And  curst  be  he  yt  moves  my  bones." 

Did  Shakespeare  write  those  jingling  lines  ? 
Or  were  they  already  in  use  in  his  lifetime  as 
a  stock  epitaph  ?  As  against  the  latter  theory  it 
should  be  remembered  that  no  copy  of  the  lines 
or  even  a  colourable  model  from  which  they 
might  have  been  derived  has  been  discovered  of  a 
date  prior  to  the  year  of  the  poet's  death.  A 
112 


THE    CHURCH 

clerical  simpleton  who  perpetrated  a  jejune 
pamphlet  in  support  of  the  Baconian  madness 
claimed  that  he  had  collected  "  evidence "  to 
prove  that  Shakespeare's  epitaph  was  a  "  crib  " 
from  an  older  inscription  ;  but  his  sole  "  evidence  " 
consists  of  a  copy  of  the  lines  found  on  a  grave- 
stone which  was  more  than  eighty  years  older 
than  the  Stratford  example  ! 

Until  late  in  the  last  century  the  earliest-known 
record  dealing  with  the  inscription  on  Shake- 
speare's grave  was  that  contained  in  some  notes 
of  a  visit  paid  to  Stratford  in  1777,  the  writer  of 
which  stated  that  "  at  the  side  of  the  chancel  is  a 
charnel-house  filled  with  human  bones,  skulls, 
&c. — the  guide  said  that  Shakespeare  was  so 
much  affected  by  this  charnel-house  that  he  wrote 
the  epitaph  for  himself  to  prevent  his  bones 
being  thrown  into  it."  In  1884,  however,  there 
was  discovered  among  the  manuscripts  of  the 
Bodleian  Library  an  old  letter  written  in  1694  by 
an  antiquary  named  William  Hall,  which  gave 
a  minute  account  of  the  traditions  prevalent  in 
Stratford  in  that  year.  "  I  very  greedily  embrace 
this  occasion  of  acquainting  you,"  so  Hall  wrote 

H  113 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

to  a  close  friend,  "  with  something  which  I  found 
at  Stratford-upon-Avon.  That  place  I  came 
unto  on  Thursday  night,  and  the  next  day  went 
to  visit  the  ashes  of  the  great  Shakespeare  which 
lye  interr'd  in  that  church.  The  verses  which,  in 
his  lifetime,  he  ordered  to  be  cut  on  his  tomb- 
stone, for  his  monument  has  others,  are  these 
which  follow  : 

1  Reader,  for  Jesus' s  sake  forbear 
To  dig  the  dust  enclosed  here  ; 
Blessed  be  he  that  spares  these  stones, 
And  cursed  be  he  that  moves  my  bones' 

"  The  little  learning  these  verses  contain 
would  be  a  very  strong  argument  of  the  want 
of  it  in  the  author,  did  not  they  carry  some- 
thing in  them  which  stands  in  need  of  a  comment. 
There  is  in  this  church  a  place  which  they 
call  the  bone-house,  a  repository  of  all  bones 
they  dig  up,  which  are  so  many  that  they 
could  load  a  great  number  of  waggons.  The 
Poet,  being  willing  to  preserve  his  bones  un- 
moved, lays  a  curse  upon  him  that  moves  them, 
114 


THE    CHURCH 

and  having  to  do  with  clerks  and  sextons,  for 
the  most  part  a  very  ignorant  sort  of  people, 
he  descends  to  the  meanest  of  their  capacity, 
and  disrobes  himself  of  that  art  which  none  of 
his  contemporaries  wore  in  greater  perfection. 
Nor  has  the  design  mist  of  its  effect,  for,  lest 
they  should  not  only  draw  this  curse  upon 
themselves  but  also  entail  it  upon  their  posterity, 
they  have  laid  him  full  seventeen  foot  deep,  deep 
enough  to  secure  him." 

In  estimating  the  value  of  William  Hall's 
tradition  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  he  wrote 
seventy-eight  years  after  Shakespeare's  death  ;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that 
such  a  period  might  have  been  within  the  recol- 
lection of  some  then  living  in  the  town.  At 
the  utmost  it  was  a  tradition  removed  from  the 
poet's  death  by  only  two  generations,  and  in  a 
country  town  of  the  seventeenth  century  such 
evidence  would  have  almost  documentary  value. 
Those  sticklers  for  Shakespeare's  fame  who 
demand  that  everything  for  which  his  authorship 
is  claimed  shall  always  be  pitched  in  the  high 
poetic  vein  must  make  their  account  with  Hall's 

JI5 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

ingenious  argument  that  the  poet  deliberately 
wrote  his  epitaph  to  suit  the  mental  capacity  of 
the  class  he  most  desired  to  impress.  Besides, 
other  poets  to  whom  high  flights  of  genius  have 
been  easy  have  been  known  to  descend  to  doggerel 
on  occasion. 

And  in  such  a  matter  as  this  surely  it  is  doing 
no  violence  to  probability  if  the  poet's  verse  is 
scanned  in  search  of  passages  which  may  betray 
his  personal  feeling.  That  he  possessed  in  an 
accentuated  form  the  sentiment  of  repulsion 
<y-  excited  by  the  fleshless  relics  of  humanity  is  no 

outrageous  inference  from  those  passages  in 
"Romeo  and  Juliet"  and  in  "Hamlet"  which 
describe  the  horrors  of  the  charnel-house  and  the 
grave.  Juliet's  fear  of  the  vault,  "  to  whose  foul 
mouth  no  healthsome  air  breathes  in,"  and  her 
vision  of  Tybalt's  "  festering  in  the  shroud  " ; 
and  Romeo's  imprecation  on  the  "  detestable 
maw  "  and  "  womb  of  death  "  ;  and  Hamlet's 
shuddering  ejaculations  as  the  gravediggers  plied 
their  gruesome  occupation,  his  "  Did  these  bones 
cost  no  more  the  breeding  but  to  play  at  loggats 
with  'em,"  and  his  "  And  smelt  so  ?  pah  !  "  do 
116 


THE    CHURCH 

suggest  on  Shakespeare's  behalf  an  abhorrence  of 
the  sights  of  the  charnel-house  which  may  have 
created  a  consuming  desire  that  his  own  bones 
should  be  allowed  to  rest  in  peace. 

But  whether  Shakespeare  did  or  did  not  pen 
that  anathematizing  stanza,  its  effect  has  been  as 
miraculous  as  though  it  had  been  promulgated 
by  a  supernatural  being.  Washington  Irving  dis- 
cerned "  something  extremely  awful "  in  the 
lines,  and  Hawthorne  placed  on  record  a  singu- 
larly striking  example  of  their  mysterious  power. 
Save  in  one  unimportant  particular,  they  have 
hitherto  preserved  the  poet's  grave  from  violation. 
The  exception  refers  to  the  sandstone  slab  which 
covers  his  resting-place ;  that  which  is  now  seen 
in  the  floor  of  the  chancel  is  not  the  original 
stone,  but  a  substitute  which  was  made  about  a 
century  ago  to  replace  its  outworn  predecessor. 
The  original  slab  has  entirely  disappeared. 

For  nearly  three  centuries,  then,  the  ashes  of 
Shakespeare  have  enjoyed  quiet  repose.  The 
nearest  approach  to  an  excavation  into  the  grave, 
wrote  Halliwell-Phillipps,  was  made  in  the 
summer    of    1796,    in    digging    a    vault    in    the 

117 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

immediate  locality,  when  an  opening  appeared 
which  was  presumed  to  indicate  the  commencement 
of  the  site  of  the  bard's  remains.  "The  most 
scrupulous  care,  however,  was  taken  not  to  dis- 
turb the  neighbouring  earth  in  the  slightest 
degree,  the  clerk  having  been  placed  there  until 
the  brickwork  of  the  adjoining  vault  was  com- 
pleted to  prevent  anyone  making  an  examination. 
No  relics  whatever  were  visible  through  the  small 
opening  that  thus  presented  itself,  and  as  the 
poet  was  buried  in  the  ground,  not  in  a  vault,  the 
chancel  earth,  moreover,  formerly  absorbing  a 
large  degree  of  moisture,  the  great  probability  is 
that  dust  alone  remains."  This  was  the  occasion 
of  which  Irving  learned  some  particulars  on  his 
visit  to  Stratford.  He  talked  with  the  old  sexton 
who  kept  watch  for  a  couple  of  days  over  the 
aperture,  and  learned  how  that  vigilant  sentinel 
had  seen  "  nothing  but  dust."  As  the  essayist 
concluded,  it  was  something  to  have  seen  the 
dust  of  Shakespeare. 

But  there  have  not  been  lacking  many  who 
would  fain  see  more  than  that ;  as  no  age  has 
wanted  those  callous  spirits  who  would  "  peep 
118 


THE   CHURCH 

and  botanize  "  on  a  mother's  grave,  so  for  several 
generations  past  there  have  been  many  victims  to 
a  ruthless  curiosity  which  has  made  them  anxious  to 
explore  the  poet's  tomb.  Sombre  German  savants 
have  wanted  to  ringer  his  skull  to  ascertain 
whether  his  brain-capacity  was  in  accurate  ratio 
with  the  legacy  of  his  genius;  exponents  of  the 
Baconian  lunacy  have  wished  to  rifle  his  coffin  for 
proofs  of  their  moonshine  theory;  phrenologists 
have  itched  to  compare  their  chart  of  the  bumps 
on  the  bust  ;  students  of  portraiture  have  pined 
for  data  which  might  enable  them  to  settle  the 
vexed  problem  of  the  poet's  true  likeness. 

To  keep  at  bay  such  a  horde  of  cranks  has 
been  no  light  task  for  the  guardians  of  Shake- 
speare's grave.  Sometimes  they  have  made  their 
assaults  as  individuals,  as  when  Delia  Bacon  tried 
her  feminine  wiles  on  one  rector,  and  a  spectacled 
German  professor  exhorted  another  in  the  sacred 
name  of  knowledge  ;  on  other  occasions  they  have 
joined  forces  and  presented  argumentative  petitions 
to  the  corporation.  But  up  to  the  present  every 
effort  to  violate  the  poet's  tomb  has  failed. 

Dark  hints  have  been  given  from  time  to  time 

119 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

that  the  general  public  has  been  kept  ignorant 
of  many  of  the  attempts  made  on  the  grave.  In 
recent  years,  so  the  whisper  goes,  no  fewer  than 
five  such  efforts  have  been  frustrated,  and  it  is 
even  asserted  that  there  is  a  secret  society  which 
exists  for  the  sole  purpose  of  guarding  the  poet's 
tomb,  the  membership  of  which  is  open  to 
Americans,  but  strictly  barred  against  Germans. 
The  birthplace  is  certainly  equipped  with  all  kinds 
of  mysterious  burglar  alarms,  and  perhaps  the 
secret  society — unless  that  organization  has  no 
more  corporate  existence  than  in  the  imagination 
of  a  journalist  gravelled  for  "  copy" — has  taken 
the  same  precaution  with  the  grave.  It  may  do  good 
to  foster  such  a  legend :  if  prospective  marauders 
can  be  convinced  that  the  chancel  of  Stratford 
Church  bristles  with  man-traps  and  spring-guns 
they  will  be  the  more  likely  to  give  it  a  wide 
berth. 

Unless  Hawthorne  greatly  overstated  the  facts 
of  the  case,  it  would  seem  that  Shakespeare's 
grave  was  never  in  more  imminent  danger  of  viola- 
tion than  when  Delia  Bacon  argued  herself  into 
the  conviction  that  the  key  to  the  philosophy  she 
120 


the  church 

read  into  the  poet's  works  was  buried  in  his  grave. 
She  had  discovered — so  she  declared  to  the  author 
of  "  Our  Old  Home  " — in  the  letters  of  Lord 
Bacon  definite  and  minute  instructions  how  to 
find  a  number  of  important  documents  which 
were  hidden  in  a  hollow  space  under  the  surface 
of  Shakespeare's  gravestone,  and  she  set  herself 
the  task  of  securing  possession  of  those  papers. 
Taking  a  humble  lodging  in  Stratford,  then,  she 
began  to  haunt  the  church,  and  eventually  seemed 
to  have  enlisted  the  sympathy  of  the  clerk  and 
rector.  But  just  as  she  imagined  she  had  secured 
the  consent  of  the  rector  to  the  opening  of  the 
grave  a  doubt  arose  in  her  mind  that  she  might 
have  made  a  mistake  as  to  the  depository  in  which 
the  documents  were  concealed. 

Nevertheless,  as  Hawthorne  wrote,  Miss  Bacon 
'  continued  to  hover  around  the  church,  and 
seems  to  have  had  full  freedom  of  entrance  in  the 
daytime,  and  special  licence,  on  one  occasion  at 
least,  at  a  late  hour  of  the  night.  She  went 
thither  with  a  dark-lantern,  which  could  but 
twinkle  like  a  glow-worm  through  the  volume 
of  obscurity  that   filled   the  great  dusky  edifice. 

121 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Groping  her  way  up  the  aisle  and  towards  the 
chancel,  she  sat  down  on  the  elevated  part  of 
the  pavement  above  Shakespeare's  grave.  If  the 
divine  poet  really  wrote  the  inscription  there,  and 
cared  as  much  about  the  quiet  of  his  bones  as  its 
deprecatory  earnestness  would  imply,  it  was  time 
for  those  crumbling  relics  to  bestir  themselves 
under  her  sacrilegious  feet.  But  they  were  safe. 
She  made  no  attempt  to  disturb  them  ;  though,  I 
believe,  she  looked  narrowly  into  the  crevices 
between  Shakespeare's  and  the  two  adjacent 
stones,  and  in  some  way  satisfied  herself  that 
her  single  strength  would  suffice  to  lift  the 
former  in  case  of  need.  She  threw  the  feeble 
ray  of  her  lantern  up  towards  the  bust,  but  could 
not  make  it  visible  beneath  the  darkness  of  the 
vaulted  roof.  Had  she  been  subject  to  super- 
stitious terrors,  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  a 
situation  that  could  better  entitle  her  to  feel 
them,  for,  if  Shakespeare's  ghost  would  rise  at 
any  provocation,  it  must  have  shown  itself  then  ; 
but  it  is  my  sincere  belief  that,  if  his  figure  had 
appeared  within  the  scope  of  her  dark-lantern,  in 
his  slashed  doublet  and  gown,  and  with  his  eyes 
122 


THE    CHURCH 

bent  on  her  beneath  the  high,  bald  forehead,  just 
as  we  see  him  in  the  bust,  she  would  have  met 
him  fearlessly  and  controverted  his  claims  to  the 
authorship  of  the  plays  to  his  very  face.  She 
had  taught  herself  to  contemn  '  Lord  Leicester's 
groom  '  (it  was  one  of  her  disdainful  epithets  for 
the  world's  incomparable  poet)  so  thoroughly 
that  even  his  disembodied  spirit  would  hardly 
have  found  civil  treatment  at  Miss  Bacon's  hands. 
Her  vigil,  though  it  appears  to  have  had  no 
definite  object,  continued  far  into  the  night. 
Several  times  she  heard  a  low  movement  in  the 
aisles  :  a  stealthy,  dubious  footfall  prowling  about 
in  the  darkness,  now  here,  now  there,  among  the 
pillars  and  ancient  tombs,  as  if  some  restless 
inhabitant  of  the  latter  had  crept  forth  to  peep 
at  the  intruder.  By  and  by  the  clerk  made  his 
appearance,  and  confessed  that  he  had  been 
watching  her  ever  since  she  entered  the  church." 

But  some  guardian  or  other  has  been  watching 
through  all  the  ensuing  years.  Delia  Bacon's 
experience  should  be  a  warning  to  other  tomb- 
troublers ;  where  she  failed  no  one  is  likely  to 
succeed.     The    anathematizing    stanza    protected 

123 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

the  poet's  ashes  through  the  ages  of  superstition  ; 
reverence  for  genius  may  be  relied  upon  to  secure 
their  repose  through  all  succeeding  generations. 

Fortunate  would  it  have  been  had  some  similar 
talisman  kept  guard  over  that  bust  of  the  poet 
which  adorns  the  wall  above  his  grave.  When 
that  monument,  with  its  columns  of  black  marble 
and  its  naked  cupids,  was  erected,  is  not  known  ; 
all  that  is  certain  is  that  it  was  completed  prior  to 
1 623,  and  hence  within  seven  years  of  Shakespeare's 
death.  It  bears  two  inscriptions,  one  in  Latin, 
which  has  been  rendered  thus  : 

"  In  wisdom  a  Nestor,  in  genius  a  Socrates,  in  art  a 
Virgil ; 
The   earth    shrouds   him,    the    nation    mourns   him, 
Olympus  guards  him  "; 

the  other  in  English  : 

"  Stay,  passenger,  why  goest  thou  by  so  fast  ? 
Read,  if  thou  canst,  whom  envious  death  hath  plasl 
Within  this  monument ;  Shakespeare  with  whome 
Quick  nature  dide  ;  whose  name  doth  deck  ys  tombe 
Far  more  than  cost ;  sith  all  yt  he  hath  writt 
heaves  living  art  but  page  to  serve  his  witty 

124 


THE   AVON    AT   STRATFORD 


THE    CHURCH 

And  then  follow  the  mortuary  details  :  "  Obit, 
ano.  doi  1 6 1 6.     iEtatis  53.     Die.  23  Ap." 

Interesting  as  the  epitaph  is  for  its  eulogistic 
references  to  the  genius  of  the  poet,  the  supreme 
value  of  the  memorial  consists  in  the  portrait 
bust. 

Is  it  a  faithful  likeness  ?  Those  who  contend 
that  it  is  argue  that  the  monument  was  un- 
doubtedly erected  by  Shakespeare's  family,  that 
his  widow  and  daughters  would  entertain  a 
laudable  anxiety  to  have  his  actual  features  pre- 
served for  posterity,  and  that  as  the  sculptor, 
Gerard  Johnson,  lived  in  Southwark  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  Globe  Theatre,  he  might 
have  known  the  poet  personally,  or  at  the  least  was 
acquainted  with  some  who  were  familiar  with  his 
appearance.  Besides,  the  sculptor  Chantrey  gave 
it  as  his  confirmed  opinion  that  the  bust  was 
taken  from  a  cast  after  death. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  was  current  in  the 
first  quarter  of  the  last  century  a  tradition  to  the 
effect  that  the  bust  was  not  founded  on  any  por- 
trait or  death-mask,  but  was  modelled  from 
a  Stratford    blacksmith  who    bore  a    remarkable 

125 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

resemblance  to  the  bard.  That  tradition,  indeed, 
was  in  existence  in  the  middle  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  for  a  writer  in  the  Gentleman  s 
Magazine  for  1759  declared  that  no  genuine 
portrait  of  Shakespeare  had  ever  existed,  and  that 
that  which  passed  for  his  was  "  taken  long  after 
his  death  from  a  person  extremely  like  him." 

Unfortunately  the  problem  is  complicated  by 
the  existence  of  other  portraits.  There  is  the 
engraved  half-length,  for  example,  by  Martin 
Droeshout,  which  formed  the  frontispiece  of  the 
First  Folio  published  in  1623,  and  other  claimants 
for  consideration  include  the  painting  from  which 
Droeshout  is  supposed  to  have  worked,  and  the 
Ely  House  and  Chandos  portraits.  Most  of  the 
best  authorities  now  agree  that  the  Droeshout 
painting — which  hangs  in  the  Memorial  picture 
gallery  at  Stratford — was  probably  painted  from 
life  in  Shakespeare's  forty-fifth  year,  and  it 
remains  for  those  who  are  not  authorities  to  accept 
that  decision  in  spite  of  the  discrepancies  between 
the  canvas  and  the  bust. 

Even  the  bust  has  been  the  occasion  of  start- 
ling differences  of  opinion.  Washington  Irving 
126 


THE    CHURCH 

described  its  aspect  as  "  pleasant  and  serene,  with 
a  finely  arched  forehead,"  and  added  :  "  I  thought 
I  could  read  in  it  clear  indications  of  that 
cheerful,  social  disposition  by  which  he  was  as 
much  characterized  among  his  contemporaries  as  by 
the  vastness  of  his  genius  "  ;  but  Hawthorne,  more 
critical  than  his  easy-going  compatriot,  declared 
that  the  sight  of  it  compelled  him  to  "  take  down 
the  beautiful,  lofty-browed,  and  noble  picture ': 
of  the  poet  which  had  hitherto  hung  in  his 
mental  portrait  gallery. 

But  Hawthorne  qualified  his  criticism.  If  he 
felt  that  the  bust  could  not  be  said  to  represent  a 
beautiful  face  or  a  noble  head,  he  admitted  that 
it  lays  firm  hold  of  one's  sense  of  reality  and 
insists  upon  acceptance  as  the  picture,  if  not  of 
the  poet,  yet  as  the  wealthy  burgher  and  the 
convivial  friend  of  John  a'  Combe.  "  I  know  not 
what  the  phrenologists  say  to  the  bust,"  he 
added.  "  The  forehead  is  but  moderately 
developed,  and  retreats  somewhat,  the  upper  part 
of  the  skull  rising  pyramidally ;  the  eyes  are 
prominent  almost  beyond  the  penthouse  of  the 
brow ;    the  upper  lip  is  so  long  that  it  must  have 

127 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

been     almost    a    deformity,  unless     the    sculptor 
artistically  exaggerated  its  length,  in  consideration 
that,  on  the  pedestal,  it    must  be  foreshortened 
by  being  looked   at  from   below.     On  the  whole, 
Shakespeare  must  have  had  a  singular  rather  than 
a  prepossessing  face  ;  and  it  is  wonderful  how,  with 
this  bust  before  its  eyes,  the  world  has  persisted 
in     maintaining    an     erroneous     notion     of     his 
appearance,   allowing   painters    and    sculptors    to 
foist  their  idealized  nonsense  on  us  all,  instead  of 
the  genuine  man.      For  my  part,  the  Shakespeare 
of  my  mind's  eye  is  henceforth  to  be  a  personage 
of  a  ruddy  English  complexion,  with  a  reasonably 
capacious  brow,  intelligent  and  quickly  observant 
eyes,  a  nose  curved  slightly  outward,  a  long  queer 
upper    lip,    with    the    mouth    a    little    unclosed 
beneath  it,  and  cheeks  considerably  developed  in 
the  lower  part  and  beneath  the  chin."     In  fine, 
the  American  writer  shared    the   opinion  of  the 
English  artist  Gainsborough,  though  he  expressed 
it  more  politely.     When  Gainsborough  accepted 
a  commission  to  paint  a  portrait  of  Shakespeare 
he  refused  to  be  bound  by  the  Stratford  monu- 
ment or  the  Droeshout  engraving.     "Damn  the 
128 


THE    CHURCH 

original    picture,"    he    exclaimed.  "I     think    a 
stupider  face  1  never  beheld." 

One  fact  may  be  urged  in  extenuation  of  the 
Stratford  bust :  none  of  its  modern  critics  saw  it 
in  its  original  state.  Not  being  protected  by- 
such  a  talisman  as  that  which  preserved  the  grave 
from  violation,  it,  in  1793,  was  subjected  to  a 
process  of  "restoration"  which  no  efforts  to 
revive  its  pristine  appearance  have  quite  obli- 
terated. The  arch-perpetrator  of  that  sacrilege 
was  Edmund  Malone,  the  Shakespearean  com- 
mentator, who  may  be  allowed  to  tell  the  story 
in  his  own  complacent  way.  "  I  ought  not  to 
forget  to  tell  you,"  he  wrote  a  friend  concerning 
his  doings  on  a  visit  to  Stratford,  "  that  I  did  a 
public  service  while  I  was  there.  His  bust,  you 
know,  about  forty  years  ago  was  painted  all  over 
with  various  colours  by  some  players,  under  the 
notion  of  beautifying  it.  With  Dr.  Davenport's 
permission  I  brought  it  back  to  its  original  state 
by  painting  it  a  good  stone  colour,  and  then, 
having  first  erected  a  small  scaffold,  we  drew  him 
carefully  from  his  niche  and  took  a  very  good 
mould  from  his  face." 

1  129 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Malone  was  mistaken  as  to  the  "  original 
state "  of  the  bust ;  there  can  be  no  question 
that,  as  was  the  custom  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  bust  was  from  the  first  coloured  in 
imitation  of  life;  and  when  the  "good  stone 
colour  "  was  removed  in  1 86 1  an  effort  was  made 
to  reproduce  the  hazel  of  the  eyes,  the  auburn 
of  the  hair  and  beard,  the  scarlet  of  the  doublet, 
and  the  crimson  and  green  of  the  cushion.  So 
Malone's  "  public  service "  was  undone,  and  he 
now  lives  in  the  annals  of  Stratford  Church  in  the 
satire  of  the  pilgrim  who  inscribed  these  lines  in 
the  visitors'  book  : 


a 


Stranger  to  whom  this  monument  is  shown, 
Invoke  the  Poet's  curse  upon  Malone  ; 
Whose  meddling  zeal  his  barbarous  taste  betrays 
And  smears  his  tombstone  as  he  marrd  his  plays." 


So  overwhelming  is  the  fame  of  Shakespeare 
that,  as  Hawthorne  remarked,  it  suffers  nothing 
else  to  be  recognized  within  its  presence  unless 
illuminated  by  some  side-ray  from  itself.  It  is 
130 


THE    CHURCH 

true  that  Stratford  Church  can  boast  many  stately 
monuments  and  curious  epitaphs,  such  as  would 
make  the  renown  of  any  other  temple  which  did 
not  harbour  so  illustrious  a  guest  as  the  poet ; 
but  to  the  majority  of  visitors  the  only  other 
memorials  of  the  dead  which  arrest  attention  are 
those  which  cover  the  dust  of  the  Shakespeare 
kindred. 

And,  as  has  been  noted  above,  they  all  lie  in  a 
row  on  either  side  of  the  immortal  poet.  To 
the  left  of  his  own  grave  is  that  of  his  wife,  the 
Anne  Hathaway  of  many  a  romantic  legend,  who 
survived  him  more  than  seven  years,  and  was  at 
length  laid  to  rest  under  an  epitaph  which  gave 
eloquent  expression  to  her  children's  affection. 
On  the  right  of  Shakespeare's  tomb  was  interred 
the  Thomas  Nash  who  was  the  first  husband  of 
the  poet's  granddaughter  and  his  last  lineal 
descendant,  while  next  in  order  come  the  graves 
of  the  poet's  son-in-law,  Dr.  Hall,  and  his  elder 
daughter,  Susannah.  While  the  epitaphs  on 
Anne  Shakespeare  and  Thomas  Nash  and  Dr. 
Hall  were  couched  in  Latin,  that  on  Susannah 
Hall  told  its  story  in  English  : 

*3* 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

"  Witty  above  her  sex,  but  that's  not  all, 
Wise  to  salvation  was  Mistress  Hall, 
Something  of  Shakespeare  was  in  that,  but  this 
Wholly  of  him  with  whom  she's  now  in  bliss." 

Which  was  a  happy  tribute  to  hereditary 
genius  and  acquired  piety,  doing  justice  alike  to 
the  Shakespeare  strain  and  the  Puritanism  of 
Susannah's  husband. 

Such  are  the  poet's  companions  in  death,  men 
and  women  of  his  own  household,  and  so  not 
likely  to  be  troubled  with  that  "delicate  indi- 
viduality "  which,  it  has  been  suggested,  might 
impel  more  sensitive  mediocrities  to  rise  up  at 
midnight  and  grope  their  way  out  of  the  church- 
door.  And  for  him  and  them  alike  there  is  the 
one  melodious  farewell  : 

"  Feat  no  more  the  heat  o   the  sun 
Nor  the  furious  winter  s  rages  ; 
Thou  thy  worldly  task  hast  done. 

Home  art  gone  and  taen  thy  wages" 


132 


CHAPTER  IV  :  The  Town 

SUCH  a  wealth  of  adulatory  adjectives  has 
been  heaped  upon  Stratford-on-Avon  solely 
because  it  was  the  home  of  Shakespeare 
that  the  truth  is  hard  to  come  by.  The  moral 
of  Henry  James's  inimitable  short  story  "  The 
Birthplace  "  has  a  wider  application  than  to  the 
two  tenements  in  Henley  Street.  When  the 
meditative  scholar  and  his  wife  assumed  their 
duties  as  custodians  of  that  famous  shrine  they 
resolved,  it  will  be  remembered,  to  abandon  the 
picturesque  legends  of  their  ignorant  predecessors 
and  restrict  themselves  to  such  facts  as  were 
supported  by  reliable  evidence.  Of  course  the 
result  was  disastrous.  Visitors  became  fewer  and 
fewer;  the  annual  income  dwindled  ;  the  trustees 
began  to  complain  ;  and  at  length  the  truthful 
pair  realized  that  a  continuance  in  well-doing 
must  end  in  their  dismissal.  At  that  juncture 
they  decided  to  revert  to  the  fanciful  stories  of 
their  predecessors.  The  new  policy  had  a  mar- 
vellous effect.     In  a  flash  the  old  popularity  of 

133 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

the  birthplace  was  restored  ;  the  stream  of  visitors 
increased  in  volume  every  month ;  the  revenue 
rose  to  heights  it  had  never  touched  ;  and  the 
trustees  and  everybody  in  the  town  rejoiced. 

While  working  such  a  suggestive  vein  it  is  a 
pity  Mr.  James  did  not  follow  it  into  other 
seams.  He  might  have  included  the  whole  of 
the  town  in  his  scheme  of  gentle  satire.  And  in 
so  doing  he  could  have  pleaded  the  illustrious 
examples  of  Horace  Walpole  and  David  Garrick. 
The  opinions  of  those  frank  topographers  have 
already  been  recorded,  the  former  having  been 
quoted  as  describing  Stratford  as  the  "  wretchedest 
old  town  "  he  had  seen,  and  the  latter  as  giving 
it  the  palm  as  "the  most  dirty,  unseemly,  ill- 
pav'd,  wretched-looking  town  in  all  Britain." 

But  a  truthful  chronicler  should  hasten  to  add 
that  the  indictments  of  Walpole  and  Garrick  are 
no  longer  true.  For  if  the  Stratford  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was  different  from  the  Strat- 
ford of  the  sixteenth  century  on  the  score  of 
picturesqueness,  the  Stratford  of  the  twentieth 
century  has  no  sanitary  likeness  to  the  Stratford 
of  Walpole  and  Garrick. 

134 


THE   TOWN 

There  is,  however,   no  denying   the   impeach- 
ment that  Stratford  is  a  singularly  sophisticated 
town.     The    commercialism     of    the     "  shrine ' 
business  is  carried  to  excess.     The  annual  Shake- 
speare festival  is  an  example.     It  lasts  for  three 
solid    weeks ;    twenty-one    days    to    celebrate    a 
birthday  which  is  only  a  tradition  !     But  the  shop- 
keepers exploit  tradition  for  three  hundred  and 
sixty-five  days  a  year.     They  have  set  their  hearts 
on  sixpences  and  dollars.      In  the  shadow  of  the 
old  Clopton  Bridge  there  is  a  steam-launch  flaunt- 
ing the   legend  "  The   George  Washington — Wel- 
come to  the  Avon,"  and  that  seductive  greeting 
is  duplicated  all   over  the   town.     The   picture- 
postal   merchant   lures  with  the    "  King    John  ' 
quotation,    "  Have   I   not  here  the  best  cards  ? ' 
there  are  "  Shakespearean  Depots  "  beyond  count ; 
there  is   an   "  As  You  Like  It "  tea-house  ;  to 
catch  the  heretics  one  street  boasts  its  "  Bacon's 
Shakespeare  Restaurant  "  ;  dealers  in  "  antiques  ': 
unblushingly    season    "  old  "    chairs    and    chests 
over  their  shop-fronts  in   full   view  of  the  un- 
suspecting   tourist  ;     and    if    the    mulberry-tree 
relics  are  gone,  the   supply  is   inexhaustible    of 

135 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

souvenirs  made  from  wood  taken  from  Shake- 
speare's church  with  a  "  certificate"  thrown  in. 
Even  the  church  used  to  be  tainted  with  that 
commercial  spirit.  Before  the  advent  of  the 
present  vicar  the  porch  and  space  just  inside  the 
door  was  a  veritable  mart  for  the  sale  of  postals, 
guide-books,  photographs,  &c,  and  at  every  turn 
one  saw  mercenary  placards  announcing  that  the 
fee  for  this  was  so  much  and  for  that  and  the 
other  so  much  more.  Happily  those  money- 
changers' tables  have  been  overturned. 

Many  "  records "  in  "  doing "  the  sights  of 
Stratford  have  been  established.  They  have,  of 
course,  been  placed  to  the  credit  of  "  hustling  " 
Americans.  Instances  are  cited  of  couples  seeing 
Europe  for  a  wager  who  have  startled  the  at- 
tendant of  the  church  by  the  unseemly  haste  of 
their  progress  up  the  nave  to  the  tomb  and  back 
to  the  door,  while  it  is  no  uncommon  thing  for 
pilgrims  to  include  between  trains  a  dash  for  the 
birthplace,  New  Place,  and  the  grave. 

There  are  certain  parts  of  Stratford  which  are 
unworthy  of  even  such  lightning  sight-seeing. 
Not  that  they  are  dirty,  or  ill-paved,  or  wretched- 
136 


THE   TOWN 

looking,  but  that  they  are  blighted  by  the  mean- 
ness of  Victorian  domestic  house-building. 
Most  of  the  streets  still  bear  the  names  by  which 
Shakespeare  knew  them,  but  the  dramatist  would 
be  greatly  exercised  to  recognize  them  in  any 
other  way.  Even  the  "Old  Town"  district, 
save  for  a  house  or  two,  belies  its  name.  There 
most  do  flourish  those  hard-lined  red-brick  villas 
which  so-called  architects  were  so  fond  of  design- 
ing in  the  last  century — abominations  of  brick  and 
slate  which  are  nowhere  so  offensive  as  in  a  town 
which  can  show  superb  examples  of  Elizabethan 
domestic  architecture.  Unless  actual  experiment 
had  proved  the  fact  beyond  dispute,  no  one 
would  imagine  that  lovely  half-timber  work  is 
hidden  behind  the  hideous  modern  brick  fronts 
of  many  a  house  in  the  business  thoroughfares  of 
the  town.  Had  those  picturesque  object-lessons 
been  in  evidence  in  the  last  century,  however,  it 
is  more  than  probable  that  their  lessons  would 
have  been  wasted  upon  house  designers  so  in- 
different to  beauty  as  those  jerry-builders  who  are 
responsible  for  so  much  of  the  monotony  of 
Stratford  streets. 

137 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

And  yet,  for  those  who  will  seek  and  spare 
time  for  the  search,  there  are  not  a  few  buildings 
still  surviving  which  provide  suggestive  food  for 
the  historic  imagination.  It  is  possible,  indeed, 
to  piece  together  a  picture  which  will  revive  the 
aspect  of  the  town  as  it  was  seen  by  Shake- 
speare's eyes  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries. 

Two  of  the  venerable  landmarks  which  link 
our  own  days  with  the  far-off  ages  owe  their 
existence  to  that  Sir  Hugh  Clopton  who  built  the 
"  praty  house  of  bricks  and  tymbre  "  which  as 
New  Place  became  the  abode  of  Shakespeare  in 
his  last  years.  A  younger  son  of  the  Clopton 
family,  whose  manor-house  is  distant  about  a 
mile  from  the  town,  Sir  Hugh  Clopton  had  to 
carve  out  his  own  fortune.  And  he  made  a  great 
success  of  the  task.  Realizing  that  there  was 
little  scope  for  his  ambition  in  the  quiet  town  by 
the  Avon,  he  made  his  way  to  the  capital  and  set 
up  business  as  a  mercer.  It  was  the  London  of 
the  fifteenth  century  in  which  his  lot  was  cast, 
when  English  commerce  was  at  the  beginning  of 
that  development  which  in  the  next  century  made 
138 


THE   TOWN 

it  a  formidable  rival  in  the  markets  of  the  world, 
and  Hugh  Clopton  appears  to  have  been  a  notable 
example  of  that  combination  of  trader  and  aris- 
tocrat which  was  not  infrequent  in  those  days. 
He  prospered  apace ;  he  gave  no  hostages  to 
fortune  by  taking  to  himself  a  wife ;  he  won  the 
favour  of  his  fellow-citizens  so  thoroughly  that 
he  became  successively  alderman,  sheriff,  and 
mayor ;  and  his  great  wealth  enabled  him  to 
emulate  the  example  of  those  fifteenth-century 
burghers  who  lavished  so  much  of  their  gold  on 
works  of  public  benefit. 

In  days  when  schools  and  bridges,  highways 
and  hospitals,  lighting  and  sanitation  are  sup- 
ported by  rate  charges  which  fall  on  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole,  we  are  apt  to  forget  those 
generous  benefactors  who  in  less  orderly  ages 
supplied  the  lack  of  state  or  municipal  aid  by 
liberal  donations  from  their  private  fortunes. 
Among  such  benefactors  Sir  Hugh  Clopton 
deserves  to  be  held  in  grateful  recollection.  He 
was  not  unmindful  of  the  needs  of  poor  scholars 
at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  nor  did  he  overlook 
the  claims  of  the  city  in  which  he  amassed  his 

139 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

wealth ;    but    he    naturally    reserved  his  greatest 
gifts  for  the  town  of  his  nativity. 

If,  then,  there  is  no  monument  to  his  memory 
in  Holy  Trinity  Church — though  a  high  tomb  in 
that  building  is  thought  to  have  been  intended 
for  his  resting-place — he  has  in  the  old  bridge 
over  the  Avon  a  memorial  which  will  preserve 
his  name  for  many  generations.  The  river  here, 
where  the  London  road  enters  the  town,  is 
abnormally  wide,  and  according  to  the  testimony 
of  Leland,  who  visited  the  town  about  1543,  it 
was  originally  spanned  by  a  "  poore  bridge  of 
tymber "  which  had  no  safe  approach,  so  that 
"many  poore  folkes  refused  to  come  to  Stratford 
when  the  Avon  was  up,  or  comminge  thither, 
stood  in  jeopardye  of  lyfe."  There  were  many 
other  communities  in  England  as  badly  off  for 
safe  bridges.  In  the  Devonshire  town  of  Barn- 
staple, for  example,  it  was  customary  to  issue 
special  licences  to  officials  to  authorize  them  to 
travel  hither  and  thither  collecting  subscriptions 
for  the  repair  and  maintenance  of  the  Long 
Bridge  over  the  "  great  hugy-mighty  perylous 
and  dreadful  water  named  Taw."  Those  licences 
140 


THE   TOWN 

appealed  to  the  generous  to  "  departe  with  some 
portions  ':  of  their  goods  to  keep  that  bridge  in 
order,  promising  the  donors  that  they  would  have 
"gret  mede  of  Almighty  God  for  your  so  doinge 
and  of  vs  hartie  thankes."  They  were  also 
promised  remembrance  in  an  annual  dirge  and 
mass  as  further  reward. 

Perhaps  the  element  of  religion  played  some 
part  in  Sir  Hugh  Clopton's  resolve  to  equip 
his  native  town  with  a  noble  and  substantial 
bridge.  But  whatever  his  motive  he  spared 
no  expense  in  carrying  out  his  self-imposed 
task.  Some  time,  then,  in  the  closing  quarter 
of  the  fifteenth  century  he  enlisted  the  services 
of  architect  and  builder  and  bade  them  rear 
such  a  bridge  over  the  Avon  and  connect  it 
with  such  causeways  as  would  ensure  a  safe 
passage  over  the  river  for  all  comers.  And  this, 
in  its  most  substantial  parts,  is  the  bridge  of 
fourteen  large  arches  which  is  still  mirrored  in 
the  placid  surface  of  Shakespeare's  stream.  It 
has  been  widened  in  more  modern  times,  it  is 
true,  but  so  much  of  the  old  structure  still 
remains  that  it  is  justly  called  the  Clopton  Bridge. 

141 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Like  the  "  auld  brig  "  of  Ayr,  it  will  long  out- 
last that  nineteenth-century  rival  of  brick  which 
so  ineffectually  challenges  comparison  between 
the  methods  of  the  old  builders  and  the  new. 

But  there  is  another  son  of  Stratford  who  has 
claims  upon  remembrance  in  connexion  with 
the  bridge  over  the  Avon.  This  is  that  John  de 
Stratford  who  eventually  became  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury.  He  came  of  a  capable  family,  for 
a  brother,  Robert,  was  Chancellor  of  England  and 
then  Bishop  of  Chichester,  and  his  nephew  Ralph 
ended  his  days  as  Bishop  of  London.  John  de 
Stratford  was  at  one  time  parson  of  his  native 
town,  and  when  he  attained  high  position  and 
wealth  he  greatly  embellished  the  church  of  his 
early  ministry.  Nor  did  he  forget  more  secular 
matters.  Thus  in  his  will,  dated  1348,  various 
sums  of  money  were  left  for  the  repair  of  the 
bridge  at  Stratford,  which  must,  of  course,  have 
been  that  "poore  bridge  of  tymber "  mentioned 
by  Leland.  Whether  that  benefaction  ever  took 
effect  is,  however,  open  to  question.  For  when 
John  de  Stratford  died  his  goods  were  valued  at  a 
sum  which,  when  his  debts  and  funeral  expenses 
142 


a 
a, 
< 
X 
V 


3 
O 

Q 
Z 
< 

o 
o 
a 
u 

CD 

OS 
< 

s 
s 
< 
as 
O 


THE    TOWN 

were  paid,  must  have  left  his  executors  out  of 
pocket. 

By  a  little  effort  of  the  imagination  it  is 
possible  to  denude  the  Clopton  Bridge  of  its 
modern  accretions  and  see  it  in  the  mind's  eye 
as  it  was  when  Shakespeare  crossed  it  on  his 
journeys  to  and  from  London.  Even  less  mental 
reconstruction  is  required  in  the  case  of  another 
building  upon  which  the  poet's  eyes  often  rested. 
Apart  from  the  probable  connexion  of  the  struc- 
ture with  his  school-days,  the  fact  that  the 
windows  of  New  Place  looked  out  upon  the  grey 
tower  of  the  Guild  Chapel  on  the  opposite  corner 
of  Chapel  Lane  is  sufficient  evidence  that  it  was 
a  constant  object  of  his  vision.  And  that  tower 
was  another  of  Sir  Hugh  Clopton's  benefactions. 
He  seems  to  have  died  before  the  work  was 
completed,  but  in  his  will  he  left  minute  instruc- 
tions for  the  carrying  on  of  the  work,  stipulating 
that  the  masons  should  "  sufficiently  and  ably 
do  and  finish  the  same  with  good  and  true  work- 
manship," and  providing  that  his  executors  should 
pay  the  charges  out  of  his  estate. 

Of  course,  Sir  Hugh  Clopton  was  the  rebuilder, 

H3 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

not  the  builder,  of  the  Guild  Chapel  nave  and 
tower.  That  sacred  edifice  had  a  long  history 
behind  it  when  it  attracted  the  re-edifying  zeal 
of  Stratford's  wealthy  mercer  son.  Indeed,  apart 
from  Holy  Trinity  Church,  there  is  no  building 
in  Stratford  which  has  so  venerable  a  history 
as  that  group  of  masonry  which  marks  the 
southern  corner  of  Chapel  Lane. 

As  the  house  of  worship  used  by  the  members 
of  the  fraternity  or  Guild  of  the  Holy  Cross,  the 
Blessed  Virgin,  and  St.  John  the  Baptist  it  is 
inseparably  associated  with  the  records  of  that 
interesting  brotherhood.  When  that  organization 
was  first  founded  is  not  known ;  why  it  was 
founded  has  been  made  clear  in  recent  years, 
though  the  discovery  of  the  document  making 
that  fact  obvious  seems  to  have  been  ignored 
by  most  writers  on  the  town.  Thus  the  inquirer 
is  informed  that  the  fraternity  was  established 
for  the  "  encouragement  of  friendliness  and 
brotherly  love,"  and  also  that  William  Sude 
is  "  the  name  of  the  author  of  the  earliest  extant 
deed  of  gift."  Most  of  the  books  on  Stratford 
are  prolific  in  other  statements  equally  inaccurate. 
144 


THE   TOWN 

According  to  the  testimony  of  the  earliest 
extant  document,  dated  in  October  1270,  the 
guild  was  founded  for  the  support  of  such  poor 
priests  as  had  been  ordained  by  the  Bishop  of 
Worcester,  but  who  held  no  benefits ;  to  provide 
for  the  necessities  of  "  other  indigent  persons  ' 
was  a  secondary  matter.  And  while  it  is  true 
that  William  Sude  was  a  benefactor  to  the  extent 
of  endowing  the  fraternity  with  a  yearly  rent  of 
the  munificent  sum  of  sixpence,  his  deed  is  but 
one  of  many  made  during  the  reign  of  Henry  III, 
none  of  which  bear  any  specific  date.  There  was 
William  Bride,  for  example,  who  also  left  an 
annual  rent  of  sixpence,  and  a  widow  named 
Juliana  de  Dumbeltone,  whose  generosity  ex- 
tended to  thirteenpence  a  year,  either  of  whom 
may  have  antedated  William  Sude. 

Although  now  known  by  the  threefold  name 
of  the  Guild  of  the  Holy  Cross,  the  Blessed 
Virgin,  and  St.  John  the  Baptist,  in  its  earliest 
days  the  fraternity  was  called  simply  the  Guild  of 
the  Holy  Cross.  It  has  been  inferred  that  its 
later  designation  was  the  outcome  of  an  in- 
corporation of  two  other  kindred  organizations, 

k  145 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

but  on  that  matter  no  evidence  is  yet  available. 
When  Godfrey  GifFord,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  in 
1270  granted  forty  days'  indulgence  to  all  sincere 
penitents  who  had  confessed  their  sins  and  con- 
ferred benefits  on  the  fraternity,  it  was  described 
merely  as  the  Guild  of  the  Holy  Cross,  and  that 
name  continued  to  be  used  in  the  deeds  of  gift 
made  during  many  subsequent  years. 

Notwithstanding  the  specific  object  for  which 
the  guild  was  founded,  it  seems  probable  that  its 
sphere  of  usefulness  was  soon  enlarged.  At  any 
rate,  by  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  it  had 
become  much  more  than  a  charitable  society  for 
the  exclusive  benefit  of  priests  without  charges. 
In  1388  the  Parliament  called  upon  the  masters 
and  wardens  of  all  guilds  to  furnish  full  par- 
ticulars concerning  the  foundation,  constitution, 
and  property  of  their  several  societies,  and  among 
the  returns  which  still  exist  is  a  curious  document 
describing  the  ordinances  of  Stratford's  Guild  of 
the  Holy  Cross.  From  this  it  appears  that  for 
males  the  annual  fee  for  membership  was  four- 
pence,  payable  a  penny  at  a  time  at  the  four 
feasts  of  the  year,  and  that  the  sisters'  contri- 
146 


THE    TOWN 

butions  were  limited  to  twopence  and  a  great 
tankard  of  ale.  The  brethren,  too,  were  expected 
to  provide  an  additional  twopence  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  Easter  feast  as  well  as  a  tankard  of 
ale  comparable  to  that  donated  by  the  weaker 
sex. 

That  Easter  feast  was  in  the  closing  years  of 
the  fourteenth  century  the  chief  festival  of  the 
guild.  It  was  to  be  conducted  in  such  a  manner 
that  "  brotherly  love  shall  be  cherished  among 
them  and  evil-speaking  driven  out ;  that  peace 
shall  always  dwell  among  them,  and  true  love  be 
upheld."  The  great  tankards  of  ale  were  to  be 
given  to  the  poor,  but  not  before  all  the  brethren 
and  sisters  had  met  for  prayer  in  their  common 
hall. 

At  the  Easter  feast,  too,  as  well  as  at  the  other 
three  festivals  of  each  year,  a  wax  candle  was  to 
be  kept  alight  "  before  the  blessed  Cross"  in  the 
chapel  of  the  guild.  Such  pious  services,  how- 
ever, did  not  exhaust  the  duties  of  the  members. 
"  It  is  ordained,"  so  ran  the  rules  of  the  society, 
"  by  the  brethren  and  sisters  of  the  guild,  that, 
when  any  of  them  dies,  the  wax  candle   before- 

147 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

named,  together  with  eight  smaller  ones,  shall  be 
carried  from  the  church  to  the  house  of  him  that 
is   dead  ;    and  there  they   shall    be    kept   alight 
before  the   body  of  the  dead   until  it  is  carried 
to    the   church;  and    the    wax   candles   shall   be 
carried  and  kept  alight  until  the  body  is  buried, 
and    afterwards    shall    be    set    before   the   Cross. 
Also,  all  the  brethren  of  the  guild  are  bound  to 
follow  the  body  to  the  church,  and  pray  for  his 
soul    until    the    body    is    buried.     And  whoever 
does  not  fulfil  this  shall  pay  one  halfpenny.     It 
is  also  ordained  by  the  brethren  and  sisters  that 
if  any   poor   man   in   the    town  dies,   or    if   any 
stranger  has  not  means  of  his  own  out  of  which 
to  pay  for  a  light  to  be  kept  burning  before  his 
body,   the    brethren    and   sisters  shall,   for    their 
souls'    health,   find   four   wax   candles,   and    one 
sheet,  and   a   hearse-cloth  to  lay  over  the  coffin 
until    the    body  is  buried."     Nor  was  that  all. 
On  the  death  of  a  brother  a  third  part  of  the 
brethren  were  required  to  watch  over  his  body 
through  each  night  ere  it  was  borne  to  the  church. 
And  further,  when  any  of  the  fraternity  fell  into 
poverty  or  was  robbed,   "  then,  so   long   as  he 
148 


THE    TOWN 

bears  himself  well  and  rightly  towards  the 
brethren  and  sisters  of  the  guild,  they  shall  find 
him  in  food  and  clothing  and  what  else  he 
needs."  Such  were  the  duties  and  privileges  of 
guild  members  in  the  closing  years  of  the  four- 
teenth century. 

Like  many  another  organization,  then,  the 
Stratford  guild  played  an  important  part  in  the 
religious  and  social  life  of  the  town  until  it  was 
suppressed  with  the  monasteries  in  1547.  Ere 
that  evil  day  dawned,  however,  the  brethren  had 
undertaken  services  for  the  community  which  in 
a  modified  form  are  still  being  rendered.  In 
addition  to  becoming  the  chief  ruling  body  of  the 
town,  the  guild  in  the  fifteenth  century  established 
a  grammar  school  for  the  children  of  members, 
and  had  provided  an  old-age  haven  for  a  dozen 
poor  men  and  as  many  poor  women.  They  also 
bore  their  share  in  the  upkeep  of  the  bridge  over 
the  Avon.  Such  good  works  were,  no  doubt, 
counted  unto  Stratford  for  righteousness  when 
some  of  the  members  of  the  guild  petitioned 
Edward  VI  to  undo  the  work  of  his  father. 

Nor  was  the  appeal  made  in  vain.     For  in  1553 

149 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

the  boy  king  granted  a  new  charter  to  the  town 
by  the  Avon  the  terms  of  which  were  as  follow 
(the  document  deserves  careful  reading  for  the 
tribute  it  bears  to  the  work  of  the  Guild  of  the 
Holy  Cross)  :  "  Whereas  the  borough  of  Stratford- 
upon-Avon  in  the  county  of  Warwick,  is  an 
ancient  borough,  in  which  borough  a  certain  Guild 
was  in  former  time  founded  and  endowed  with 
divers  lands  tenements  and  possessions,  from  whose 
rents  revenues  and  profits  a  certain  Grammar 
School  was  maintained  and  supported  for  the 
education  and  instruction  of  boys  and  youths,  and 
a  certain  charitable  house  was  there  maintained 
and  supported  for  the  sustenance  of  twenty-four 
poor  persons,  and  a  certain  great  stone  bridge 
called  Stratford  Bridge  placed  and  built  over  the 
water  and  river  of  the  Avon  beside  the  said 
borough  was  from  time  to  time  maintained  and 
repaired,  and  the  lands  tenements  and  possessions 
of  the  same  Guild  have  come  into  our  hand  and 
now  remain  in  our  hands  ;  And  whereas  the  in- 
habitants of  the  borough  of  Stratford  aforesaid 
from  time  beyond  the  memory  of  man  have  had 
and  enjoyed  divers  franchises  liberties  and  free 
150 


THE    TOWN 

customs  jurisdictions  privileges  reversions  and 
quittances  by  reason  and  pretext  of  charters  con- 
cessions and  confirmations  made  in  ancient  time 
by  our  progenitors  to  the  Master  and  Brethren  of 
the  aforesaid  Guild  and  otherwise,  which  the  same 
inhabitants  of  the  same  borough  aforesaid  are  now 
very  little  able  to  have  and  enjoy,  because  the 
aforesaid  Guild  is  dissolved,  and  in  consideration 
of  other  causes  now  apparent  to  us  whence  it 
appears  likely  that  the  borough  aforesaid  and  the 
government  thereof  may  go  to  a  worse  state  from 
time  to  time,  if  a  remedy  be  not  quickly  provided." 
For  that  reason,  then,  the  king  granted  the  town 
a  new  charter,  one  effect  of  which  was  to  restore 
the  grammar  school  to  its  beneficent  mission,  and 
another  to  equip  the  town  with  a  municipal  form 
of  government. 

That  royal  grant  came  in  the  nick  of  time. 
The  new  form  of  government  enabled  John 
Shakespeare  to  attain  distinction  among  his  fellow- 
townsmen  by  holding  various  offices  in  the 
corporation ;  the  restitution  of  the  grammar 
school  provided  an  instrument  for  the  education 
of  Stratford's  most  famous  son. 

151 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

Hence  the  pilgrim  to  Stratford  will  not  only 
visit  the  Guild  Chapel  as  the  still-surviving 
memorial  of  a  friendly  society  whose  picturesque 
history  is  of  absorbing  interest,  but  will  pass  into 
the  ancient  grammar  school  and  con  its  panelled 
walls  with  the  arrested  attention  which  is  due  to 
the  building  where  Shakespeare  learnt  his  "  small 
Latin  and  less  Greek."  It  is  true  there  is  no 
incontestable  evidence  that  this  was  the  scene  of 
the  poet's  school-days,  but  the  presumption  that 
it  was  is  almost  as  strong  as  actual  proof.  To 
this  school,  as  Sir  Sidney  Lee  has  remarked,  the 
children  of  the  Stratford  freemen  were  sent,  with 
rare  exceptions.  It  was  a  type  of  those  common 
schools  where  all  sorts  of  children  were  taught  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  and  it  must  be  accepted  as 
Shakespeare's  place  of  education  until  proof  to 
the  contrary  is  forthcoming.  Altogether,  then, 
this  corner  of  the  town,  with  'ts  ancient  chapel 
and  guild-hall  and  grammar  school  and  pic- 
turesque almshouses,  should  aid  the  pilgrim  not 
a  little  in  his  effort  to  repicture  the  Stratford  of 
the  past. 

And  within  a  stone's-throw,  on  the  west  side 
152 


HARVARD    HOUSE 


THE    TOWN 

of  the  High  Street,  there  is  another  ancient 
building  which  is  the  most  notable  survival  of 
the  domestic  architecture  of  Shakespeare's  own 
days.  /THisTs'the  Harvard  House,  whiclTTs  now~ 
the  property  of  the  Harvard  University.  Now 
the  date  on  that  house,  1596,  coincides  with  an 
important  year  in  the  life  of  Shakespeare,  for  it 
was  in  1596  he  lost  his  only  son,  and  we  may  be 
certain  that  he  did  not  fail  to  visit  his  native  town 
on  that  sad  occasion.  The  house  on  the  High 
Street  was  built  by  Thomas  Rogers,  a  prosperous 
tradesman  of  the  town  who,  like  John  Shake- 
speare, had  held  office  in  connexion  with  the 
corporation,  and  that  he  made  it  a  conspicuous 
example  of  contemporary  domestic  architecture 
may  .be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  it  is  even 
to-day  prominent  among  the  show-places  of 
Stratford.  Rich  as  the  town  is  in  ancient  build- 
ings, there  is  no  structure  of  its  type  which  can 
display  such  a  wealth  of  curious  detailed  carving 
or  present  such  an  attractive  picture  as  a  whole. 
From  what  is  known  of  the  houses  of  Stratford 
in  the  sixteenth  century  it  is  safe  to  conclude 
that  this  new  home  of  the  Rogers  family  must 

*S3 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

have  been  the  talk  of  the  town  in  the  year  of  its 
completion,  and  there  can  be  little  risk  in 
hazarding  the  guess  that  Shakespeare  himself 
took  an  early  opportunity  of  wandering  through 
its  rooms. 

But  the  Harvard  House  has  been  a  sad 
stumbling-stone  to  many  Stratford  chroniclers. 
One,  for  example,  commits  himself  to  the  asser- 
tion that  Thomas  Rogers's  daughter  Catherine 
"married  John  Harvard  of  Southwark.  From 
their  union  sprang  the  Rev.  John  Harvard,  born 
in  Southwark  probably  in  1607."  This  choice 
sample  of  misinformation  is  perpetrated  in  the 
guide-book  issued  by  a  great  railway  company, 
the  title-page  of  which  is  adorned  with  the 
warning,  "  Copyright  in  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States  of  America."  There  is  some 
consolation  in  that  prohibitive  sentence  :  it  may 
prevent  timid  compilers  from  perpetuating  absurd 
blunders.  And  some  day,  perhaps,  the  great 
railway  company  will  learn  that  Catherine  Rogers 
married  a  Robert  Harvard,  that  it  was  their  son 
who  was  christened  John,  and  that  there  is 
nothing  "  probable  "  about  the  date  of  his  birth. 
154 


THE  TOWN 

Some  modern  pilgrims,  it  seems,  will  improve 
upon  truth  to  the  extent  of  affirming  that  John 
Harvard  was  born  in  the  Harvard  House.  He 
was  not.  His  birthplace  was  in  Southwark,  not 
far  from  the  Globe  Theatre  associated  with 
Shakespeare's  London  career.  What  is  ad- 
ditionally certain  is  that  on  the  eighth  day  of 
April  1605  a  bridal  party  set  out  from  the 
Harvard  House  in  Stratford,  and  that  a  few 
minutes  later,  at  the  altar  of  Holy  Trinity  Church, 
close  beside  the  spot  where  eleven  years  later  to 
the  very  month  the  body  of  William  Shakespeare 
was  to  be  laid  to  rest,  Robert  Harvard  and 
Catherine  Rogers  plighted  that  troth  which  was 
to  have  such  momentous  results  for  the  cause  of 
learning  in  New  England. 

While  many  of  the  older  houses  in  Stratford 
wear  an  aspect  suggestive  of  their  years,  there  are 
not  a  few  others  which  are  more  venerable  than 
they  look.  In  the  first  catagory  must  be  placed 
Hall's  Croft,  once  the  home  of  the  Dr.  John 
Hall  who  married  Shakespeare's  elder  daughter, 
and  The  Cage,  which  was  for  more  than  a  genera- 
tion the  abode  of  the  poet's  younger  daughter, 

1S5 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

and  the  house  of  Julius  Shaw,  which  adjoins 
Nash's  house ;  in  the  latter  class  must  be  in- 
cluded Mason  Croft,  the  residence  of  Marie 
Corelli,  the  Red  Horse  Hotel,  and  several  more. 
In  fact,  there  is  no  judging  the  age  of  Stratford 
houses  by  their  present  appearance,  for  in  the 
early  nineteenth  century  so  many  of  them  had 
their  fronts  plastered  over  that  there  is  no  telling 
what  exquisite  examples  of  half-timbered  work 
may  not  be  hidden  from  view  behind  the  hideous 
cement  which  was  so  much  in  fashion  a  century 
ago. 

Judging  from  indications  which  have  been 
discovered  while  repairs  were  being  carried  out, 
it  is  highly  probable  that  the  Red  Horse  Hotel 
could  once  boast  as  picturesque  an  elevation  as 
the  Harvard  House.  Apart  from  that  fact, 
however,  the  ancient  hostelry  is  one  of  the 
recognized  sights  of  the  town  owing  to  its  envi- 
able associations  with  the  memory  of  Washing- 
ton Irving.  To  all  readers  of  the  delightful 
"  Sketch-Book  "  it  is  as  familiar  as  Shakespeare's 
birthplace.  Who  has  not  been  charmed  with 
the  gentle  essayist's  description  of  the  sense  of 

i56 


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O  — 


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THE   TOWN 

comfort  which  suffused  his  being  as,  his  boots 
kicked  off  and  his  feet  thrust  into  slippers,  he 
stretched  himself  before  the  glowing  fire  of  his 
little  parlour  in  the  hospitable  hotel  ?  Let  the 
world  without  go  as  it  liked,  he  mused,  let 
kingdoms  rise  or  fall,  so  long  as  he  had  the 
means  wherewith  to  pay  his  reckoning  he  was 
monarch  of  all  he  surveyed.  The  armchair  was 
his  throne,  "  the  poker  his  sceptre,  and  the  little 
parlour,  some  twelve  feet  square,  his  undisputed 
empire."  But  the  dream  was  soon  broken.  The 
clock  struck  the  midnight  hour,  and  then  "  there 
was  a  gentle  tap  at  the  door,  and  a  pretty 
chambermaid,  putting  in  her  smiling  face,  in- 
quired, with  a  hesitating  air,  whether  I  had  rung. 
I  understood  it  as  a  modest  hint  that  it  was  time 
to  retire.  My  dream  of  absolute  dominion  was 
at  an  end;  so,  abdicating  my  throne,  like  a 
prudent  potentate,  to  avoid  being  deposed,  and 
putting  the  Stratford  guide-book  under  my  arm, 
as  a  pillow  companion,  I  went  to  bed,  and 
dreamed  all  night  of  Shakespeare,  the  jubilee,  and 
David  Garrick." 

Nearly  a  century  has  passed  since  that  scene 

157 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

was  enacted  in  the  tiny  room  to  the  left  of  the 
archway  which  gives  entrance  to  the  Red  Horse 
Hotel,  but  the  apartment  is  to-day  as  much  per- 
vaded by  Washington  Irving's  presence  as  when 
he  was  its  actual  occupant.  His  two  rooms, 
indeed — for  his  bedroom  is  immediately  over  his 
sitting-room — are  practically  unchanged  and  are 
often  sought  out  by  those  who  hold  their  one- 
time guest  in  affectionate  remembrance  as  the 
most  gracious  figure  in  the  annals  of  American 
literary  history. 

So  Georgian,  indeed,  is  the  appearance  of 
Washington  Irving's  parlour  that  it  is  not  difficult 
to  realize  that  nearly  a  hundred  years  have  elapsed 
since  he  presided  on  the  armchair  throne  which 
is  now  carefully  preserved  in  a  glass-doored  cup- 
board. To  shut  oneself  into  the  little  room 
for  a  brief  spell  of  meditation  is  to  lose  all 
reckoning  of  time.  It  is  true  the  tables  are 
littered  with  modern  literature,  but  if  the 
magazines  and  guide-books  of  the  twentieth 
century  are  swept  out  of  sight  there  is  little 
else  to  recall  the  present.  The  old  sexton's 
grandfather  clock,  the  high-backed  chairs,  the 
158 


THE    TOWN 

venerable  tables,  the  antique  topographical  views 
and  old  prints  create  an  atmosphere  wholly  in 
harmony  with  the  spirit  of  the  "Sketch-Book." 
Perhaps  the  stickler  for  accuracy  will  discover 
that  the  apartment  is  not  "  some  twelve  feet 
square,"  but  measures  fourteen  feet  six  inches 
by  nine  feet  six  inches;  otherwise  he  will  have 
little  fault  to  find  with  Irving's  description.  It 
will  aid  the  pilgrim's  imagination  to  gaze  upon 
Irving's  portrait  and  to  examine  the  quaint 
silhouette  of  the  "  pretty  chambermaid "  who 
was  immortalized  by  the  American  guest.  If, 
too,  he  is  a  trustworthy  person,  not  given  to 
collecting  relics  regardless  of  their  ownership,  he 
will  be  entrusted  for  a  few  minutes  with  that 
tiny  poker,  Irving's  "  sceptre,"  which  is  usually 
kept  under  lock  and  key.  And  from  the  little 
parlour  he  may  make  a  journey  upstairs  to  the 
modest  bedroom  where  Irving  slept  and  dreamed 
of  Shakespeare  and  David  Garrick. 

Another  ancient  hostelry,  which  depends  for  its 
attractions  more  upon  its  venerable  history  than 
associations  with  famous  men,  is  the  Shakespeare 
Hotel    in    Chapel    Street.      Originally  a   manor- 

iS9 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

house  built  in  the  fourteenth  century,  as  the 
claim  is,  it  has  for  some  two  hundred  years 
catered  for  the  needs  of  the  traveller,  and 
within  the  past  few  years  judicious  restoration  has 
transformed  the  interior  into  an  approximate 
reproduction  of  its  original  oak-beamed  and  open- 
fireplaced  appearance.  The  old  sign,  with  a 
portrait  of  Shakespeare  and  the  legend,  "  Take 
him  for  all  in  all,  we  shall  not  look  upon  his  like 
again,"  hangs  at  the  head  of  the  ancient  black  oak 
staircase,  while  the  walls  of  the  passages  and 
public  rooms  are  adorned  with  countless  pictures 
which  owed  their  inspiration  to  one  or  other  of 
the  poet's  creations.  All  the  bedrooms  are  named 
after  the  titles  of  the  plays,  while  the  bar  is 
decorated  with  the  appropriate  words  "  Measure 
for  Measure." 

But  the  Clopton  Bridge  and  the  Guild  Chapel 
and  the  Harvard  House  and  the  two  hostelries  just 
described  belong  to  ancient  history  ;  there  are 
other  buildings  of  a  more  modern  date  which  the 
pilgrim  to  Stratford  cannot  afford  to  ignore. 

Chief  among  the  latter  is  that  Shakespeare 
Memorial  which  occupies  so  prominent  a  site  on 
1 60 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    MEMORIAL   THEATRE 


THE   TOWN 

the  bank  of  the  Avon.  From  the  old  bridge, 
indeed,  it  is  as  conspicuous  as  Holy  Trinity 
Church  itself,  and  its  lofty  tower  is  as  much  a 
beacon  to  the  devotee  as  the  spire  of  the  poet's 
resting-place. 

Garrick  is  sometimes  credited  with  entertaining 
the  ambition  to  found  at  Stratford  an  institution 
in  honour  of  Shakespeare  which  should  serve  as  a 
kind  of  university  for  all  textual  and  histrionic 
students  of  the  poet.  He  may  have  cherished 
such  an  idea  before  his  "Jubilee"  experience; 
subsequently,  however,  such  were  the  satires  and 
lampoons  provoked  by  his  masquerading  at 
Stratford,  his  enthusiasm  cooled,  and  it  was  left 
for  another  actor  to  revive  the  project  in  the  first 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  actor  in 
question  was  Charles  Mathews,  most  remarkable 
of  mimics,  who  when  fulfilling  an  engagement  at 
Stratford  in  the  closing  month  of  1820  added  this 
footnote  to  his  playbill :  "  At  the  conclusion  of 
the  evening's  entertainment  Mr.  Mathews  will 
have  the  honour  of  submitting  to  the  audience 
the  nature  of  some  proposals  that  have  been 
suggested   for  the    purpose    of   erecting,  in    the 

l  161 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

form  of  a  Theatre  in  Stratford,  a  National 
Monument  and  Mausoleum  to  the  immortal 
memory  of  Shakespeare."  As  the  actor  had  to 
give  his  performance  in  the  Town  Hall  in  lieu  of 
a  properly  equipped  theatre,  he  may  have  had 
an  ulterior  motive  in  submitting  his  scheme  to 
the  natives  of  the  town.  A  "  Mausoleum  "  was 
certainly  not  needed  in  view  of  the  grave  and 
monument  in  the  parish  church,  but  perhaps  that 
was  added  as  a  bait  to  ensure  subscriptions  for  the 
theatre  which  was  necessary.  The  project,  how- 
ever, did  not  awaken  any  practical  enthusiasm, 
and  it  was  not  until  Charles  E.  Flower  took 
the  matter  in  hand  in  1874  by  presenting  a  site 
and  a  thousand  pounds  that  a  serious  beginning 
was  made  with  the  movement  which  eventually 
resulted  in  the  erection  of  the  semi-Elizabethan 
pile  of  buildings  familiar  to  all  visitors  to 
Stratford. 

Whether  the  structure  as  a  whole  is  as  happy 
in  design  as  might  be  desired  in  view  of  it  being 
the  most  important  modern  memorial  of  Shake- 
speare in  his  native  town  must  be  decided  by  each 
pilgrim  for  himself.  It  is,  however,  a  matter  for 
162 


THE    TOWN 

gratitude  that  the  town  does  now  possess  an 
auditorium  eminently  suitable  for  the  performance 
of  the  poet's  plays,  a  library  for  the  housing  of 
the  literature  which  has  sprung  up  around  his 
name,  and  a  gallery  for  the  display  of  those  works 
of  art  in  canvas  and  marble  which  his  genius  has 
inspired. 

Of  the  theatre  nothing  more  need  be  said 
than  that  it  provides  an  adequate  playhouse  for 
those  performances  which  mark  the  birthday 
festival  every  year.  It  is  compact,  comfortable,  has 
excellent  acoustic  properties,  is  well  ventilated, 
and  possesses  a  picturesque  drop-scene  represent- 
ing Queen  Elizabeth  going  in  state  to  the  open- 
ing of  the  Globe  Theatre.  The  first  performance 
took  place  on  April  23,  1879,  wnen  Helen  Faucit 
and  Barry  Sullivan  appeared  as  the  chief  characters 
in  "  Much  Ado  about  Nothing." 

For  a  library  which  has  not  been  in  existence 
much  more  than  a  generation  the  oak  presses 
of  the  Memorial  are  surprisingly  well  stocked,  the 
volumes  numbering  upwards  of  seven  thousand. 
Here,  then,  the  student,  who  is  given  every 
facility  for  research,  can  consult  practically  every 

163 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

edition  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  from  the  costly 
First  Folios  down  to  the  cheapest  reprint,  while 
the  illustrative  literature  is  rich  in  the  standard 
works  of  a  critical,  historical,  bibliographical,  and 
biographical  nature.  In  due  time,  no  doubt,  the 
library  will  take  rank  as  the  most  complete  collec- 
tion of  all  printed  material  relating  to  Shakespeare 
and  the  history  of  the  drama,  for  even  newspaper 
cuttings  are  regularly  filed  and  indexed. 

To  the  casual  visitor,  however,  it  is  probable 
that  the  picture  galleries  of  the  Memorial  will 
provide  the  greatest  pleasure,  for  on  the  walls  of 
the  hall  and  landing  and  upstairs  rooms  there 
is  already  shown  an  admirable  collection  of  busts, 
portraits,  and  imaginative  interpretations  of  the 
poet's  plays.  The  statuary  includes  reproduc- 
tions of  the  Westminster  Abbey  monument, 
the  bust  in  Holy  Trinity  Church,  the  Becker 
Death-Mask,  and  marble  busts  of  such  famous 
impersonators  of  the  Shakespeare  heroines  as 
Mary  Anderson,  Ellen  Terry,  Sarah  Siddons, 
Helen  Faucit,  and  Ada  Rehan.  Most  of  these 
are  exhibited  in  the  hall  or  library. 

In   the    main    picture   gallery   the    most    con- 
164 


THE    TOWN 

spicuous  position  is  rightly  given  to  the  Droe- 
shout  portrait  of  the  poet,  which,  as  already 
noted,  is  regarded  as  the  only  contemporary 
likeness  in  existence.  The  portrait,  which  is 
painted  on  a  panel  of  English  elm  prepared  with 
white  plaster  and  red  priming,  bears  other  evidences 
of  age  than  the  inscription  in  the  upper  left-hand 
corner  of  "Willm.  Shakespeare,  1609."  By  its 
side  may  be  seen  a  proof  of  the  engraving  which 
adorned  the  First  Folio  of  1623,  and  a  comparison 
of  the  two  makes  it  obvious  that  the  latter  was 
based  on  the  former.  If  the  visitor  desires  to 
still  further  perplex  himself  with  the  problem 
of  Shakespeare's  portrait,  he  will  find  ample 
material  close  at  hand,  for  the  gallery  also  includes 
the  Venice,  Jacob  Tonson,  Willett,  Napier,  and 
Soest  pictures,  while  in  addition  there  is  a  photo- 
graph of  the  Becker  Death-Mask  and  a  replica 
of  that  D'Avenant  bust  which  is  more  satisfactory 
as  a  work  of  art  than  convincing  as  a  likeness. 

Scattered  here  and  there  through  the  collection 
are  many  less  dubious  portraits  of  actors  and 
actresses  who  have  won  fame  by  the  interpreta- 
tion of  Shakespearean  characters.     Other  portraits 

165 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

might  have  been  rejected  with  advantage,  for  it  is 
not  easy  to  understand  upon  what  principle  room 
has  been  found  for  W.  Farren  in  the  character  of 
Sir  Peter  Teazle,  J.  L.  Toole  and  W.  H.  Stephen 
in  "  The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth,"  Mrs.  Young  as 
Cora  in  "  Pizarro,"  or  Mrs.  Stirling  as  Peg 
Woffington.  It  is  to  be  feared,  indeed,  that  the 
officials  of  the  Memorial,  like  the  trustees  of  the 
Birthplace,  have  not  exercised  sufficient  discretion 
in  looking  gift-horses  in  the  mouth,  and  that 
consequently  there  will  some  day  have  to  be  a 
wholesale  clearance  of  many  incongruous  exhibits. 
When  that  day  arrives,  however,  there  will  be  no 
need  to  plead  for  the  preservation  {of  Sir  Thomas 
Lawrence's  portrait  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  George 
Romney's  "  Titania,"  or  the  spirited  bust  of 
"  Mary  Anderson  as  Hermione." 

When  the  visitor  turns  to  the  pictures  which 
are  frankly  imaginative  interpretations  of  scenes 
in  different  plays  he  will  probably  derive  most  en- 
joyment from  those  which  were  originally  painted 
as  contributions  to  the  famous  Boydell  Shakespeare 
Gallery.  The  originator  of  that  gallery,  John 
Boydell,  after  amassing  a  large  fortune  as  a  print 
166 


THE   TOWN 

publisher,  conceived  the  idea  of  offering  for  sub- 
scription a  series  of  engravings  illustrative  of  the 
plays  of  Shakespeare,  the  originals  of  which  were 
to  be  specially  painted  for  the  gallery.  In  pursuit 
of  that  ambitious  scheme  he  gave  commissions  to 
all  the  best  artists  of  the  day,  and  as  soon  as  a 
sufficient  number  of  pictures  had  been  completed 
he  erected  a  gallery  in  Pall  Mall  for  their  re- 
ception. In  the  end  upwards  of  a  hundred  and 
seventy  paintings  were  executed  by  some  thirty- 
three  artists,  at  a  cost  to  Boydell  of  some  thirty 
thousand  pounds.  It  was,  in  truth,  as  the 
originator  claimed,  a  "  national  attempt,"  and  no 
subject,  he  added,  could  have  been  more  appro- 
priate than  "  England's  inspired  poet  and  great 
painter  of  nature,  Shakespeare."  Owing  to  various 
circumstances,  the  pictures  are  now  widely 
scattered,  but  some  representative  examples  have 
happily  found  a  permanent  home  in  the  Memorial 
at  Stratford.  There  are  pictures,  then,  by  Robert 
Smirke,  Henry  Fuseli,  Francis  Wheatley,  Thomas 
Stothard,  James  Northcote,  and  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  which  are  exceedingly  valuable  illustra- 
tions of  the  aesthetic  appreciation  of  Shakespeare 

167 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

in  the  late  eighteenth  century.  Among  the  other 
pictures  which  lend  variety  to  the  gallery  are 
Thomas  Brook's  arrestive  "  Shakespeare  before 
Sir  Thomas  Lucy,"  H.  J.  Fradelle's  decorative 
"  Othello,"  and  Henry  P.  Briggs's  vivacious 
picture  of  "Fanny  Kemble  in  the  green-room  of 
Covent  Garden  dressing  for  her  first  appearance 
as  Juliet."  Nor  should  the  visitor  overlook  that 
stately  portrait  by  Paul  van  Somer  of  "  Henry 
Wriothesley,  Earl  of  Southampton,"  the  aristo- 
cratic friend  and  patron  of  Shakespeare. 

Another  modern  monument  which,  truth  to 
tell,  is  more  commendable  for  its  utility  than  its 
beauty,  stands  in  the  centre  of  the  old  Rother 
Market,  an  open  space  where  five  roads  meet  and 
not  far  from  the  birthplace  in  Henley  Street. 
This,  of  course,  is  the  Memorial  Fountain,  which 
owes  its  existence  to  the  generosity  of  George  W. 
Childs,  of  Philadelphia.  The  inscriptions  on  the 
four  sides  of  the  structure,  which  includes  a  four- 
dialled  clock  in  its  upper  story,  tell  how  it  was 
the  gift  of  an  American  citizen  to  the  town  of 
Shakespeare  in  the  Jubilee  year  of  Queen  Victoria, 
repeat  quotations  from  the  plays  in  praise  of  the 
168 


lisFi^jl? 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    MEMORIAL   FOUNTAIN 


THE    TOWN 

veteran  Queen  and  "  honest  water,"  and  cite 
Washington  Irving's  eulogy  :  "  Ten  thousand 
blessings  on  the  bard  who  has  gilded  the  dull 
realities  of  life  with  innocent  illusions."  At  the 
dedication  ceremony  in  October  1887,  whereat 
the  principal  speech  was  delivered  by  Henry 
Irving,  there  was  read  a  felicitous  letter  from 
James  Russell  Lowell  declaring  that  the  dust 
that  is  sacred  to  the  Englishman  is  not  less  sacred 
to  the  American,  and  that  sentiment  found  fitting 
echo  in  the  poem  which  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
wrote  specially  for  the  occasion  : 


a 


Land  of  our  Fathers,  ocean  makes  us  two. 

But  heart  to  heart  is  true  ! 
Proud  is  your  towering  daughter  in  the  JVest^ 
Tet  in  her  burning  life-blood  reign  confest 
Her  mother  s  pulses  beating  in  her  breast. 
This  holy  fount ',  whose  rills  from  heaven  descend^ 

Its  gracious  drops  shall  lend — 
Both  foreheads  bathed  in  that  baptismal  dew. 
And  love  make  one  the  old  home  and  the  new  I  " 


169 


CHAPTER  V  :  The  Shakespeare 
Villages 

BIOGRAPHIES  of  Shakespeare  fall  na- 
turally into  the  two  categories  of  the 
canonical  and  the  apocryphal.  And  ac- 
cording to  the  type  so  are  the  contents.  The 
canonical  life  is  a  sober,  somewhat  dryasdust 
affair,  in  which  tradition  is  scouted  and  anecdote 
is  supplanted  by  learned  fancies.  The  apocryphal 
life  is  apt  to  go  to  the  other  extreme  and  strain 
credulity  to  the  breaking-point. 

To  hit  the  happy  medium  is  somewhat  diffi- 
cult. It  needs  a  judgment  finely  balanced  and 
fully  informed.  For  there  are  so  many  legends 
about  the  poet  which  it  is  difficult  to  accept  or 
dismiss  on  the  score  of  fitness  and  probability. 
No  doubt  some  of  the  anecdotes  which  figured 
in  the  jest-books  of  the  eighteenth  century  were 
fathered  on  Shakespeare  for  lack  of  a  more  con- 
spicuous sponsor,  and  in  the  main  their  puerile 
nature  is  a  sufficient  proof  of  their  bastard  origin. 
The  devotee  of  the  poet  is  often,  indeed,  in  a  sad 
170 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    VILLAGES 

case ;  if  some  of  the  stones  of  his  hero  are 
scorned  as  bearing  the  same  relation  to  sober 
fact  as  the  Apocrypha  to  the  received  Canon  of 
Scripture,  he  is  at  least  compelled  to  admit  that 
if  they  are  not  authentic  they  often  make  good 
reading. 

And  if  some  authorities  are  inclined  to  return 
the  verdict  of  "  not  proven  "  to  the  charge  that 
Shakespeare  was  a  hard  drinker,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  balance  of  the  evidence  of 
tradition  inclines  to  the  other  scale.  There  is 
that  old  story,  for  example,  which  tells  how 
when  he  took  a  friend  down  into  his  cellar  that 
friend  observed  there  were  no  chairs  to  sit  upon, 
and  asked  the  reason.  "Because,"  rejoined  the 
poet,  "  I  will  have  no  man  that  comes  here  drink 
any  longer  than  he  can  stand."  That  anecdote 
is,  of  course,  capable  of  a  temperance  interpreta- 
tion ;  but  on  the  other  hand  it  suggests  an 
endurance  in  imbibition  which  gives  point  to 
another  story. 

For  about  midway  in  the  eighteenth  century 
there  •  became  current  an  anecdote  which  has 
immortalized  a  group  of  villages   to  the   south- 

171 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

west  of  Stratford.  The  chief  of  those  villages 
was  Bidford,  which  in  the  poet's  days  was  the 
meeting- place  of  two  companies  of  hard  drinkers 
known  as  the  Topers  and  the  Sippers.  The 
former  were,  of  course,  the  more  seasoned  tipplers, 
but  the  latter  were  thought  capable  of  holding 
their  own  against  any  other  drinkers  in  the 
country.  So  proud,  indeed,  were  the  Topers 
and  Sippers  of  their  accomplishments  that  they 
seem  to  have  issued  a  general  challenge  to  all 
the  devotees  of  Bacchus.  That  challenge,  so  the 
story  went,  was  the  occasion  of  Shakespeare 
getting  together  a  little  band  of  his  comrades 
and  making  a  journey  to  Bidford  to  sustain 
the  honour  of  the  convivial  spirits  of  Stratford. 

When,  however,  the  Stratford  champions 
arrived  at  Bidford  they  discovered  to  their 
mortification  that  the  Topers  had  gone  to  another 
village  on  a  similar  errand.  But  the  Sippers 
were  at  home  and  expressed  their  willingness 
to  try  a  bout  with  the  visitors  from  Stratford. 
Although  holding  this  second  team  in  small 
account,  Shakespeare  and  his  companions  accepted 
the  challenge,  nothing  doubting  that  victory 
172 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    TILLAGES 

would  be  swift  and  easy.  But  the  despised 
Sippers  gave  so  good  an  account  of  themselves 
that  the  men  of  Stratford  soon  retired  from  the 
contest.  On  leaving  Bidford,  indeed,  they  were 
in  so  sore  a  plight  that  they  sank  down  by  the 
wayside  under  a  crab-tree,  and  there  spent  the 
night.  With  the  morning  confidence  returned  to 
some  of  Shakespeare's  comrades,  and  they  urged 
him  to  return  with  them  to  Bidford  to  try 
another  bout  with  the  victorious  Sippers.  But 
the  poet  declined ;  he  was  quite  satisfied  with  his 
experience  of  drinking  with 


c< 


Piping  Pebworth,  dancing  Marston, 
Haunted  Hillborough,  and  hungry  Grafton, 
With  dadging  Exha//,  papist  Wixford, 
Beggarly  Broom,  and  drunken  Bidford" 


It  would  seem,  then,  that  the  Topers  and 
Sippers  were  recruited  from  eight  villages,  and 
the  quatrain,  which  has  been  fathered  upon 
Shakespeare,  has  led  to  those  eight  hamlets  being 
described  as  the  Shakespeare  villages.  The  con- 
scientious pilgrim  may  wish   to  include  them  in 

173 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

his  itinerary,  and  the  accomplishment  of  that 
ambition  will  lead  him  through  pleasant  scenery 
and  make  him  acquainted  with  many  venerable 
churches  and  bridges  and  manor-houses.  At 
Bidford,  indeed,  there  is  still  pointed  out  a 
handsome  Tudor  building  which  is  said  to  have 
been  the  Falcon  Inn  where  Shakespeare  and  his 
companions  were  defeated  by  the  Sippers,  and 
Temple  Grafton  is  of  greater  interest  as  contain- 
ing the  successor  of  that  ancient  church  in  which 
in  all  probability  the  poet  was  wedded  to  Anne 
Hathaway. 

After  all,  however,  it  is  not  the  group  of 
hamlets  to  the  south-west  of  Stratford,  but 
another  group  to  the  north-east  which  has  a  far 
greater  right  to  the  designation  of  the  Shakespeare 
villages.  These,  of  course,  are  Charlecote, 
Hampton  Lucy/  Snitterfield,  Wilmcote,  and 
Shottery.  They  may  all  be  included  in  a  four 
hours'  drive  and  should  on  no  account  be  over- 
looked by  the  pilgrim  who  is  anxious  to  complete 
his  knowledge  of  the  Shakespeare  country. 

Of  two  of  the  real  Shakespeare  villages  it  may 
be  said  that  they  are  as  familiar  to  the  lover  of 

174 


ENTRANCE   TO   CHARLECOTE    PARK 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    TILLAGES 

the  poet  as  Stratford  itself.  One  of  them,  namely, 
Charlecote,  was  included  in  the  pilgrimage  of 
Washington  Irving  and  Hawthorne,  each  of 
whom  rounded  out  his  visit  by  exploring  the 
scene  of  Shakespeare's  legendary  deer-stalking 
exploit.  What  is  amazing,  however,  is  that  both 
the  American  pilgrims  entirely  ignored  the  other 
hamlet.  Neither  in  the  "Sketch-Book"  nor 
"Our  Old  Home"  is  there  any  reference  to 
Shottery  and  Anne  Hathaway's  girlhood  home. 

Charlecote  is  of  course  of  supreme  interest  for 
its  sixteenth-century  master,  Sir  Thomas  Lucy, 
and  its  association  with  the  incident  which  is 
generally  accepted  as  the  cause  of  Shakespeare 
leaving  his  native  town  for  London.  But  whether 
the  youthful  poet  did  actually  indulge  in  poach- 
ing and  was  punished  for  his  offence,  and  then 
took  revenge  by  lampooning  Sir  Thomas  Lucy, 
and  finally  fled  the  countryside  to  escape  further 
whipping  and  imprisonment,  has  been  a  matter  of 
dispute  for  many  years. 

De  Quincey,  it  will  be  remembered,  would 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  deer-stealing  story. 
He    called    it  a  "slanderous  and  idle    tale,"    an 

175 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

anecdote  "  fabulous  and  "rotten  to  its  core,"  and 
asked  his  readers'  permission  to  deal  with  it 
"  with  summary  indignation."  Unfortunately  the 
Opium-eaterwasneitheran  antiquary  nor  a  judicious 
historian,  and  in  any  case  it  must  be  remembered 
that  if  so  well  established  a  tradition  is  to  be 
rejected  and  the  same  precedent  followed  in 
connexion  with  other  stories,  there  would  be 
practically  nothing  left  of  Shakespeare  biography. 
De  Quincey  protested  too  much  ;  after  all,  deer- 
stalking was  not  quite  the  heinous  offence  postu- 
lated by  his  indignant  outburst. 

While  it  is  impossible  to  date  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  many  Shakespeare  stories,  no  such 
uncertainty  attaches  to  the  deer-stealing  incident. 
It  was  first  placed  on  record  in  a  manuscript 
written  before  1708,  the  year  of  the  death  of 
that  Rev.  Richard  Davies,  a  Gloucestershire 
rector,  who  made  the  following  note  in  a  manu- 
script account  of  the  life  of  Shakespeare  :  "  Much 
given  to  all  unluckiness  in  stealing  venison  and 
rabbits,  particularly  from  Sir  .  .  .  Lucy,  who 
had  him  oft  whipped  and  sometimes  imprisoned, 
and  at  last  made  him  fly  his  native  county,  to  his 
176 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    VILLAGES 

great  advancement.  But  his  revenge  was  so  great 
that  he  is  his  Justice  Clodpate,  and  calls  him  a 
great  man,  and  that  in  allusion  to  his  name 
bore  three  louses  rampant  for  his  arms.  "  This 
version  was  somewhat  amplified  by  Nicholas 
Rowe,  who,  in  his  life  of  the  poet  published  in 
1709,  gave  the  following  account  of  a  story 
which  had  been  gleaned  for  him  independently  by 
a  visitor  to  Stratford  :  "  He  had5  by  a  mistortune 
common  enough  to  young  fellows,  fallen  into  ill 
company,  and  amongst  them  some,  that  made 
a  frequent  practice  of  deer-stealing,  engaged  him 
more  than  once  in  robbing  a  park  that  belonged 
to  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  of  Charlecote,  near  Stratford. 
For  this  he  was  prosecuted  by  that  gentleman,  as 
he  thought,  somewhat  too  severely ;  and  in  order 
to  revenge  that  ill-usage,  he  made  a  ballad  upon 
him.  And  though  this,  probably  the  first  essay 
of  his  poetry,  be  lost,  yet  it  is  said  to  have 
been  so  very  bitter  that  it  redoubled  the 
prosecution  against  him  to  that  degree  that  he 
was  obliged  to  leave  his  business  and  family  in 
Warwickshire  for  some  time,  and  shelter  himself 
in  London." 

M  I77 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Rowe,  it  will  be  observed,  specifically  states 
that  the  offending  ballad  which  the  poet  wrote, 
and,  according  to  another  story,  affixed  to  the 
gates  of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy's  mansion,  was  "lost." 
That,  however,  did  not  deter  some  scribe  from 
an  attempt  to  supply  the  omission.  Indeed,  two 
attempts  were  made  to  fill  in  that  lacuna  in  the 
works  of  Shakespeare.  Some  years,  then,  after 
the  publication  of  Rowe's  life  it  was  claimed  that 
one  verse  of  the  satirical  ballad  had  been  dis- 
covered among  the  manuscripts  of  the  antiquary 
Oldys.  That  stanza  seems  to  have  been  accepted 
as  genuine  by  Washington  Irving,  even  though 
he  admitted  it  was  a  "rough  pasquinade."  The 
reader  who  is  familiar  with  the  Shakespeare  style 
will  be  competent  to  form  his  own  judgment 
when  he  has  read  the  following  lines  : 

"  A  parliament  member,  a  justice  of  peace, 
At  home  a  poor  scarecrow,  at  London  an  asse, 
If  lowsie  is  Lucy,  as  some  vo/ke  miscalle  it, 
Then  Lucy  is  lowsie,  whatever  befall  it. 
He  thinks  himself  great ; 
Tet  an  asse  in  his  state, 
178 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    PILLAGES 

We  allow  by  his  ears  but  with  asses  to  mate. 
If  Lucy  is  lowsie,  as  some  volke  miscalle  it, 
Then  sing  lowsie  is  Lucy,  whatever  befall  it." 

Quite  different  in  style  and  point  of  satire  was 
the  other  fragment,  which  is  said  to  have  been 
written  down  at  Stratford  after  hearing  it  sung 
by  an  old  woman.  The  recorder  of  the  following 
two  stanzas  is  said  to  have  rewarded  the  old 
woman  with  a  new  gown,  and  to  have  declared 
that  he  would  have  given  her  ten  guineas  if  she 
could  have  remembered  the  whole  : 

"  Sir  Thomas  was  too  covetous 
To  covet  so  much  deer, 
When  horns  enough  upon  his  head 
Most  plainly  did  appear. 

"  Had  not  his  worship  one  deer  left  ? 
What  then  ?     He  had  a  wife 
Took  pains  enough  to  find  him  horns 
Should  last  him  during  life." 

Such  are  the  samples  of  doggerel  which  have 

179 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

been  fathered  upon  Shakespeare  in  connexion  with 
the  deer-stalking  legend.  They  may  have  in- 
fluenced others  than  De  Quincey  in  dismissing  the 
incident  as  fabulous  and  a  "  slanderous  and  idle 
tale."  But  so  sober  a  biographer  as  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  takes  quite  another  view.  He  regards 
the  story  as  perfectly  credible;  "the  evidence 
that  remains  to  us  is  unanimous  in  its  favour ; 
the  allusions  in  the  plays  bear  it  out ;  and  there 
is  no  solid  argument  against  it." 

One  apparently  "  solid  argument  "  has  certainly 
been  adduced.  It  has  been  contended  that  the 
Sir  Thomas  Lucy  of  the  story  had  no  deer-park. 
De  Quincey  made  fine  play  with  this.  "A 
baronet,  who  has  no  deer  and  no  park,  is  supposed 
to  persecute  a  poet  for  stealing  these  aerial  deer  out 
of  this  aerial  park,  both  lying  in  nephelococcygia." 
It  may  be  remarked  that  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  could 
hardly  have  been  a  "  baronet,"  seeing  that  he  had 
been  in  his  grave  eleven  years  before  that  title 
was  created,  and  with  regard  to  the  other  point  of 
De  Quincey's  jest  Sir  Sidney  Lee  remarks  :  "But 
Sir  Thomas  Lucy  was  an  extensive  game-preserver, 
and  owned  at  Charlecote  a  warren  in  which  a  few 
1 80 


THE  SHAKESPEARE    VILLAGES 

harts  or  does  doubtless  found  an  occasional  home." 
In  further  support  of  that  argument  it  may  be  re- 
called that  in  1602  the  successor  of  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy,  who  also  bore  his  father's  Christian  name,  ap- 
pears in  the  list  of  those  who  sent  bucks  to  Lord 
Ellesmere  when  he  entertained  Queen  Elizabeth. 
This  is  a  strong  presumptive  proof  that  the  Sir 
Thomas  of  Shakespeare's  young  manhood  pos- 
sessed both  a  park  and  deer  at  Charlecote. 

By  "the  allusions  in  the  plays"  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  means,  of  course,  the  opening  scene  of 
"The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor."  That  scene, 
indeed,  has  been  accepted  by  many  as  Shake- 
peare's  autobiography.  One  theorist  assures  us 
that  the  poet  introduced  into  that  play  more  of 
the  colour  of  Stratford  life  than  in  any  other  of 
his  works.  It  is  true  the  scene  is  laid  in  Windsor, 
but  it  is  claimed  that  the  locality  is  really 
Stratford.  We  are  asked  to  believe,  moreover, 
that  Anne  Page  and  William  Fenton  are  but  the 
name-disguises  of  Anne  Hathaway  and  William 
Shakespeare.  And  William  Fenton's  wart  has 
been  adduced  as  sober  evidence,  especially  as  the 
Chandos  portrait  of  the  poet  is  said  to  show  a 

181 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

"  perceptible  mark  or  wart "  !  Aside  from  such 
hair-splitting  interpretations,  there  remains  the 
fact  that  the  first  scene  of  "  The  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor  "  does  introduce  us  to  the  self-im- 
portant Justice  Shallow,  the  "  Justice  Clodpate ,: 
of  the  earlier  deer-stealing  story,  and  most  com- 
mentators are  agreed  that  Shakespeare's  original 
for  that  character  was  none  other  than  his  whilom 
persecutor,  Sir  Thomas  Lucy.  The  scene,  indeed, 
has  been  taken  as  the  poet's  apologia  for  his 
youthful  exploit  and  as  his  belated  and  most 
ample  revenge  on  the  knight  of  Charlecote.  He 
was,  of  course,  a  justice  of  the  peace,  and 
"Coram'  and  "  Custaloram  "  and  the  "dozen 
white  luces  "  in  his  coat-of-arms  were  an  additional 
clue  to  the  man  who  boasted  "  three  luces  haurient 
argent."  And  as  Justice  Shallow's  charge  against 
Falstaff  comprised  the  indictments  "  You  have 
beaten  my  men,  killed  my  deer,  and  broke  open 
my  lodge,"  the  identity  seems  complete. 

Charlecote,  then,  is  not  likely  to  be  despoiled 
of  its  association  with  the  poet.  Besides,  romance 
and  art  and  poetry  have  strengthened  the  link. 
More  than  one  painter  has  transferred  to  canvas 
182 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    TILLAGES 

his  imaginative  conception  of  the  scene  in  Charle- 
cote  Hall  when  the  youthful  poacher  was  dragged 
before  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  while  Landor  and 
Richard  Garnett  have  made  the  episode  the 
theme  of  prose  and  verse.  Landor's  "  Citation 
and  Examination  of  William  Shakespeare  "  won 
from  Charles  Lamb  the  high  praise  that  only  two 
men  could  have  written  it — that  is,  the  man  who 
did  write  it  and  the  man  about  whom  it  was 
written.  Landor  certainly  knew  the  setting  of 
his  story,  for  he  was  a  Warwick  man  himself  and 
was  as  familiar  with  Charlecote  as  with  the  legend. 
And  the  skit  is  most  enjoyable  for  the  serious 
manner  in  which,  as  evidence,  the  table  on  which 
Shakespeare  had  eaten  the  deer  is  produced  at  the 
trial.  There  were  the  four  "  deadly  spots," 
mounds  of  grease,  which  were  proof  enough  of 
the  culprit's  offence.  And  the  evidence  was  con- 
clusive when  the  worthy  Silas  pronounced  them 
on  oath,  after  tasting,  to  be  the  fat  of  buck 
venison.  But  the  "  Citation  "  must  be  read  as  a 
whole,  through  all  its  quaint  dialogue  and  spirited 
incident  down  to  the  sudden  escape  of  the 
prisoner. 

183 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

Nor  is  Richard  Garnett's  little  drama  of 
"  William  Shakespeare,  Pedagogue  and  Poacher," 
less  amusing.  In  its  motive  it  owes  something  to 
the  "horn"  doggerel  quoted  above,  for  Lady 
Lucy  is  described  as  enamoured  of  the  young 
poacher  and  jealous  of  Anne  Hathaway.  The 
climax  is  different,  however,  for  Shakespeare  is 
released  from  Sir  Thomas  Lucy's  clutches  by  no 
less  a  person  than  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  who  has 
journeyed  to  Stratford  to  command  the  poet's 
appearance  at  court  owing  to  his  fame  having 
reached  the  ears  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  Scattered 
through  the  drama  are  many  admirable  pen- 
portraits  of  the  poet,  and  the  description  of 
Charlecote  is  welcome  as  expressing  in  verse  the 
picture  the  house  presents  to  this  day: 

"  Sound  stands  the  mansion  still,  Wis  true,  with  roof 
Impervious  to  the  beams  and  rains  of  heaven 
Nor  yet  bereft  of  soaring  pinnacle. 
Or  portalled  lodge,  or  zone  of  stately  trees  ; 
The  thickest   blooms   and  fruits ;    nor  hath    the 

plough 
Profaned  or  daisied  mead  or  lawny  dell." 

184 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    VILLAGES 

While  Charlecote  Hall  is  rarely  open  to  visitors, 
the  park  is  traversable  on  the  payment  of  a  fee. 
But  mansion  and  park  alike  are  well  within  view 
from  the  public  road.  The  latter  is  still  dis- 
tinguished for  those  stately,  shady,  sleepy  elms 
which  so  took  the  fancy  of  Hawthorne.  "They 
were  civilized  trees,"  he  wrote,  "  known  to  man 
and  befriended  by  him  for  ages  past.  There  is 
an  indescribable  difference  between  the  tamed, 
but  by  no  means  effete  (on  the  contrary,  the 
richer  and  more  luxuriant),  Nature  of  England, 
and  the  rude,  shaggy,  barbarous  Nature  which 
offers  us  its  racier  companionship  in  America." 
And  from  the  trees  his  fancy  wandered  to  the 
deer,  the  descendants  of  which  still  browse  over 
the  sward  of  Charlecote  park.  "  By  and  by, 
among  those  refined  and  venerable  trees,  I  saw  a 
large  herd  of  deer,  mostly  reclining,  but  some 
standing  in  picturesque  groups,  while  the  stags 
threw  their  large  antlers  aloft,  as  if  they  had  been 
taught  to  make  themselves  tributary  to  the  scenic 
effect.  Some  were  running  fleetly  about,  vanish- 
ing from  light  into  shadow  and  glancing  forth 
again,  with  here  and  there  a  little  fawn  careering 

185 


SHsAKESPEsARE  ^ND  STRATFORD 

at  its  mother's  heels.  These  deer  are  almost  in 
the  same  relation  to  the  wild,  natural  state  of 
their  kind  that  the  trees  of  an  English  park  hold 
to  the  rugged  growth  of  an  American  forest. 
They  have  held  a  certain  intercourse  with  man 
for  immemorial  years ;  and,  most  probably,  the 
stag  that  Shakespeare  killed  was  one  of  the 
progenitors  of  this  very  herd,  and  may  himself 
have  been  a  partly  civilized  and  humanized  deer, 
though  in  a  less  degree  than  these  remote  pos- 
terity. They  are  a  little  wilder  than  sheep,  but 
they  do  not  snuff  the  air  at  the  approach  of 
human  beings,  nor  evince  much  alarm  at  their 
pretty  close  proximity;  although,  if  you  continue 
to  advance,  they  toss  their  heads  and  take  to 
their  heels  in  a  kind  of  mimic  terror,  or  some- 
thing akin  to  feminine  skittishness,  with  a  dim 
remembrance  or  tradition,  as  it  were,  of  their 
having  come  from  a  wild  stock."  It  may 
have  been  from  observing  this  tame  herd,  Haw- 
thorne suggested,  that  Shakespeare  conceived  his 
loving  and  pathetic  description  of  a  wounded 
stag. 

As  to  Charlecote  Hall  itself,  the  "  air  of  still- 
186 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    TILLAGES 

ness  and  solitude  "  which  impressed  Washington 
Irving  yet  prevails.  This  notion  may  be  due  to 
that  distant  view  which  is  all  that  is  possible  for 
most  visitors,  but  it  is  one  which  is  confirmed 
each  time  the  mansion  is  seen.  It  stands  at  the 
end  of  its  umbrageous  avenue  in  a  kind  of 
comatose  condition,  as  though  ever  dreaming  of 
its  more  glorious  past.  Although  built  so  long 
ago  as  1559,  and  of  course  constructed  on  a 
ground  plan  representing  the  letter  E  out  of 
compliment  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  it  is  as  well 
preserved  a  specimen  of  Tudor  domestic  architec- 
ture as  can  be  found  in  many  a  day's  search. 
The  house  and  estates  are  often  said  to  be  still  in 
possession  of  the  original  Lucy  family,  and  the 
pilgrim  will  now  and  then  have  pointed  out  to  him 
the  present  owner  as  a  lineal  descendant  of  Shake- 
speare's Sir  Thomas.  But  all  that  is  a  mistake. 
What  descent  there  was  has  been  much  watered 
by  distaff  inheritance  and  assumption  of  the  name 
of  Lucy.  The  fact  is  that  the  direct  line  became 
extinct  with  the  sons  of  a  Fulk  Lucy,  whose 
second  daughter  Alice  left  the  estate  to  her 
grandson,   a  Rev.   John    Hammond.     He    after- 

187 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

wards  assumed  the  name  of  Lucy,  and  in  due 
time  it  was  a  daughter  of  this  line  who  came  into 
the  possession  of  Charlecote.  When  she  married 
a  baronet  in  his  own  right  there  was  another 
assumption  of  the  family  name  on  the  part  of  her 
husband. 

But  the  real  Lucy  line,  at  least  in  effigy,  may 
be  seen  on  the  tombs  which  stand  in  Charlecote 
Church.  Although  that  church  has  been  rebuilt, 
the  chapel  containing  the  memorials  of  the  knights 
of  Charlecote  is  intact,  and  the  three  principal 
tombs,  it  will  be  observed,  preserve  the  memory 
of  as  many  Sir  Thomases.  Hence  the  pardonable 
confusion  which  sometimes  bewilders  the  Shake- 
spearean pilgrim.  The  poet,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
was  the  contemporary  of  three  Sir  Thomases, 
but  it  was  the  knight  who  died  in  1600  who  was 
so  jealous  of  his  deer.  The  second  enjoyed  the 
title  and  estates  for  but  five  years ;  the  third  out- 
lived Shakespeare  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

Although  there  is  no  inscription  on  the  altar- 
tomb  of  the  first  Sir  Thomas  to  indicate  that  he 
shares  it  with  his  wife,  it  does  bear  a  white  marble 
effigy  of  the  original  of  Justice  Shallow,  the  face 
188 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    VILLAGES 

of  which,  albeit  it  is  that  of  a  goodly-looking 
man,  may  suggest  to  some  that  self-conceit  and 
pride  of  rank  which  one  is  apt  to  attribute  to  a  man 
who  may  have  dealt  hardly  with  the  divine  poet. 
By  his  side  lies  the  full-length  effigy  of  his  wife, 
whose  virtues,  as  celebrated  by  the  inscription 
from  her  husband's  pen,  were  so  overwhelming  as 
to  make  Dr.  Garnett's  suggestion  as  to  her  illicit 
love  for  Shakespeare  seem  incredible.  "All  the  time 
of  her  lyfe  a  true  and  faythful  servant  of  her  good 
God,  never  detected  of  any  cryme  or  vice,"  is  a 
testimonial  which  puts  all  poetic  licence  to  shame. 
And  yet  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  lady's 
son-in-law  described  her  as  a  thorough  vixen  ! 

It  was  the  second  Sir  Thomas  who  made  Lord 
Ellesmere  that  present  of  a  buck  referred  to 
above  ;  the  third  Sir  Thomas  was  so  much  a 
patron  of  letters  that  it  was  thought  fit  to  adorn 
his  monument  with  a  shelf  of  books.  It  would 
have  been  pleasant  if  that  dummy  library  had 
included  an  identifiable  replica  of  the  First  Folio. 
The  third  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  however,  whatever 
his  leanings  towards  literature,  shared  to  the  full  his 
grandfather's  determination  to  repress  all  poaching 

189 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

on  his  estate.  In  evidence  of  that  ancestral  trait 
there  exists  a  lengthy  document  in  which  Sir 
Thomas  laid  before  the  Star  Chamber  a  bill  of 
complaint  against  a  dozen  or  more  poachers  who 
had  conspired  and  combined  to  hunt  deer  in  one 
of  his  parks.  This  was  in  July  1610,  when 
Shakespeare  was  still  living  and  able  to  appreciate 
the  humour  of  the  situation.  All  the  Lucy 
monuments,  by  the  way,  bear  the  three  luces, 
otherwise  pikes,  of  the  family  arms,  and  one 
tomb  actually  shows  three  luces  in  four  quarters, 
making  a  total  reminiscent  of  "  the  dozen  white 
luces  "  in  "  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor." 

When  the  pilgrim  resumes  his  tour  of  the 
Shakespeare  villages,  he  will,  if  he  be  fortunate 
in  his  cicerone,  have  his  attention  called  to  that 
"  Tumble-down  Stile "  which  is  said  to  have 
been  the  scene  of  the  poet's  capture  when  return- 
ing from  his  poaching  expedition.  The  stile  is 
worth  noting  on  its  own  account.  Enticing  little 
models  are  on  sale  in  the  souvenir  shops  of 
Stratford,  but  it  is  interesting  to  examine  the 
original  set  in  the  hedgerow  of  this  picturesque 
Warwickshire  countryside.  It  is  a  unique  struc- 
190 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    VILLAGES 

ture,  having  nothing  in  common  with  the  turn- 
stile or  with  the  usual  type  which  necessitates  the 
climbing  of  wooden  bars.  There  are  four  bars, 
it  is  true,  but  they  are  so  pivoted  on  an  upright 
that  they  can  be  depressed  with  a  touch  of  the 
hand  and  fall  back  into  position  as  soon  as 
released. 

Hampton  Lucy,  the  next  village  in  the 
itinerary,  is  pleasantly  situated  on  the  Avon 
and  recalls  the  fact  that  this  part  of  the  Lucy 
estates  was  a  gift  of  "  Bloody  Mary  "  to  Shake- 
speare's Sir  Thomas  in  1556.  Had  that  miserable 
queen  been  acquainted  with  the  fact  that  her 
beneficiary  had  been  educated  by  the  martyrologist 
Foxe  and  would  live  to  favour  his  Puritan 
sentiments,  she  would  hardly  have  made  him 
so  generous  a  gift.  The  church  here  has  been 
rebuilt,  but  the  old  grammar  school  remains  as  an 
example  of  early  seventeenth-century  architecture. 
Like  the  church,  the  bridge  over  the  river  is 
modern,  but  there  are  nooks  and  corners  of  the 
village  which  may  well  have  changed  but  little 
since  the  days  of  the  poet. 

Although  Hampton  Lucy  has  no  direct  con- 

191 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

nexion  with  the  life-story  of  Shakespeare, 
Snitterfield,  which  lies  two  or  three  miles  to 
the  north,  is  in  a  different  case.  That  village, 
it  will  be  remembered,  is  accepted  by  the  best 
authorities  as  the  birthplace  and  boyhood  home 
of  the  poet's  father,  John  Shakespeare,  and  to 
this  day  there  stands,  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
hamlet,  an  attractive  little  half-timbered  building 
known  traditionally  as  the  Shakespeare  Cottage.  So 
far  as  appearance  goes,  the  cottage  may  well  have 
been  built  in  the  sixteenth  century,  but  there  is 
nothing  more  than  legend  to  connect  it  with 
the  poet's  family.  There  is  every  probability 
that  the  Richard  Shakespeare  who  in  1550  was 
the  tenant  at  Snitterfield  of  Robert  Arden  of 
Wilmcote  was  the  grandfather  of  the  poet,  and 
that  his  son  Henry,  who  never  left  the  village, 
was  his  uncle.  We  know,  too,  that  Mary 
Shakespeare,  the  mother  of  the  poet,  had  an 
interest  in  two  houses  situated  at  Snitterfield. 
These  details  practically  exhaust  all  the  known 
facts  of  the  Shakespeare  connexion  with  the 
village,  and  the  pilgrim  must  fill  in  the  blanks 
as  well  as  his  imagination  will  permit.  Rural 
192 


THE    SHAKESPEARE   COTTAGE   AT   SNITTERFIELD 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    VILLAGES 

traditions  are  tenacious  things  ;  they  are  often 
trustworthy  evidence ;  and  in  the  absence  of 
documentary  proof  to  the  contrary  the  Shake- 
speare Cottage  will  doubtless  long  continue  to 
excite  interest  for  its  probable  connexion  with  the 
ancestors  of  the  immortal  bard.  And  in  any 
case  the  hamlet  must  always  be  held  in  honour 
as  the  scene  of  the  ministerial  labours  of  that 
Rev.  Richard  Jago  whose  allegory  on  the  garden 
of  New  Place  was  cited  in  a  previous  chapter. 

On  the  return  journey  to  Stratford  the  route 
lies  through  two  hamlets  the  names  of  which 
must  quicken  the  imagination  of  all  devout 
Shakespeareans.  The  first  of  these,  Wilmcote, 
was  the  home  of  the  poet's  mother,  Mary  Arden ; 
the  second,  Shottery,  was  the  scene  of  his  winning 
Anne  Hathaway  to  his  love.  Save  for  the  Arden 
farmhouse,  Wilmcote  will  not  detain  the  visitor 
long.  The  blight  of  modern  building  has  fallen 
heavily  on  the  village,  and  in  place  of  thatched 
roof  and  oak-beamed  walls  there  is  the  un- 
loveliness  of  slate  and  common  brick.  Happily 
the  Arden  homestead  has  not  been  tampered 
with.     It   stands   close    by    the    roadside,  fenced 

n  193 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

off  from  the  highway  by  a  sturdy  stone  wall  and 
embowered  in  summertime  with  a  wealth  of 
rambler  roses  and  other  creepers.  It  is  not  a 
pretentious  building ;  its  downstairs  windows 
and  upstairs  dormers  suggest  an  accommodation 
limited  to  some  ten  rooms ;  but  it  was  a  spacious 
house  for  sixteenth-century  days,  and  the  inven- 
tory of  the  belongings  of  Robert  Arden  shows 
him  to  have  been  a  yeoman  of  more  than 
ordinary  substance.  The  old  oak  beams  in  the 
passage  and  low-pitched  rooms  would  still  pro- 
vide a  seemly  setting  for  those  benches  and  chairs, 
those  coffers  and  "  painted  cloths,"  those  chafing- 
dishes  and  candlesticks  which  were  tabulated 
among  the  "  goodes  moveable  and  unmoveable  ' 
of  Robert  Arden  when  he  died  in  1556.  His 
will  of  the  same  year  showed  that  his  youngest 
daughter  Mary  held  that  uppermost  place  in  his 
affection  which  is  so  often  the  fortune  of  the 
latest-born  female  child  of  an  old  man.  In 
the  oblivion  which  has  overtaken  so  many 
of  the  buildings  connected  with  the  earthly  days 
of  the  poet  it  is  a  cause  for  congratulation  that 
there  is  still  spared  the  quaint  old  house  which 
194 


THE   SHAKESPEARE    VILLAGES 

was  the  girlhood  home  of  the  woman  who  gave 
him  birth. 

But  Wilmcote  has  another  claim  upon  the 
Shakespearean  student.  When  it  is  recalled  that 
the  local  pronunciation  of  the  name  of  the  village 
is  "  Wincot "  a  new  interest  is  imparted  to  the 
Induction  of  "  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew."  The 
modern  stage  directions  inform  us  that  the  scene 
of  that  humorous  prelude  was  "  before  an  ale- 
house on  a  heath,"  but  in  the  First  Folio  the 
imagination  of  the  reader  was  allowed  to  locate 
the  episode  as  he  would.  There  is  nothing,  then, 
in  the  earliest  text  of  the  comedy  to  controvert 
the  view  of  those  who  hold  that  in  describing  the 
quarrel  between  the  drunken  Christopher  Sly  and 
Marian  Hacket,  the  "fat  ale-wife,"  Shakespeare 
had  in  mind  one  of  his  haunts  in  the  adjacent 
village  of  Wilmcote.  Tradition,  indeed,  affirms 
that  the  poet  was  in  the  habit  of  frequenting  the 
"  Wincot  "  ale-house  that  he  might  divert  himself 
with  the  sayings  of  a  fool  who  was  employed  in  a 
neighbouring  mill.  It  has  been  discovered,  too, 
that  the  name  of  "Sly':  is  mentioned  several 
times  in  the   records  of  Stratford.     Altogether, 

J95 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

then,  there  are  reasonable  grounds  for  believing 
that  in  penning  the  opening  scene  of  "  The 
Taming  of  the  Shrew  "  the  dramatist  drew  freely 
upon  his  Stratford  reminiscences. 

One  other  hamlet  remains,  the  Shottery  famous 
all  the  world  over  for  that  picturesque  thatched 
cottage  which  was  the  home  of  Anne  Hathaway. 
About  a  generation  ago  the  startling  announce- 
ment was  made  that  an  old  picture  of  Shakespeare's 
marriage  with  the  maiden  of  Shottery  had  been 
brought  to  light.  It  depicted  an  interior  and  an 
inner  room,  the  first  being  occupied  by  the 
parents  of  the  bride,  of  whom  the  father  was 
engaged  in  weighing  out  in  scales  the  gold  and 
silver  of  his  daughter's  marriage  portion.  In  the 
inner  room  were  the  figures  of  Anne  and  her 
lover,  with  a  priest  joining  their  hands  together. 
The  owner  of  the  picture  hazarded  the  guess  that 
the  ceremony  was  taking  place  in  the  house  of  the 
bride's  father,  and  he  noted  that  the  chief  room 
had  a  "  tessellated  pavement "  and  that  its  furni- 
ture included  a  "cabinet  with  statuary  on  the  top 
of  it."  But  no  one  seems  to  have  been  greatly 
excited  over  the  "  discovery,"  and  in  a  few  months 
196 


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THE   SHAKESPEARE    TILLAGES 

the  canvas  sank  into  that  oblivion  from  which  it 
had  been  untimely  rescued. 

According  to  the  canonical  lives  of  Shake- 
speare, the  father  of  the  poet's  bride  was  a  fairly 
prosperous  farmer  of  Shottery,  who  left  his 
daughter  Agnes,  a  name  which  was  used  as  inter- 
changeable with  Anne,  the  sum  of  six  pounds 
thirteen  shillings  and  fourpence.  The  other  facts 
are  that  the  cottage  at  Shottery  remained  in  the 
possession  of  the  Hathaway  family  until  well  on 
in  the  last  century  and  was  purchased  by  the 
birthplace  trustees  twenty  years  ago.  In  its 
exterior  the  cottage  is  far  more  akin  to  what 
must  have  been  its  aspect  in  the  sixteenth  century 
than  the  birthplace,  while  the  chief  interior  room, 
with  its  latticed  windows  and  great  open  fireplace 
and  massive-beamed  ceiling,  seems  to  exhale  the 
very  atmosphere  of  those  far-off  days  when 
William  Shakespeare  came  a-courting.  The 
whole  question  of  his  marriage  has,  it  is  true, 
been  cumbered  with  much  dryasdust  discussion 
about  the  prenuptial  bond  and  other  matters; 
but  those  details  may  be  left  in  the  hands  of  the 
antiquaries  and  lawyers.      The  ordinary  pilgrim 

197 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

visits  Shottery  in  a  romantic  mood  ;  he  can  re- 
picture  a  lovely  Warwickshire  maiden  issuing 
from  that  ancient  doorway  to  meet  that  handsome 
young  son  of  John  Shakespeare  of  Stratford,  and 
with  that  he  is  content.  Than  this  picturesque 
cottage,  then,  with  its  ancient  roof-tree  and  tangled 
garden  of  the  flowers  of  old  rural  England,  there 
could  not  be  a  more  seemly  terminus  for  a  poetic 
pilgrimage. 


198 


NOTES  FOR  THE  TOURIST 


ROUTES 

There  is  a  choice  of  three  railway  lines  from 
London  to  Stratford-on-Avon.  During  the 
summer,  day  excursions  at  a  cheap  rate  are 
available  by  each,  particulars  of  which  may  be 
learned  from  advertisements  in  the  daily  news- 
papers or  from  the  inquiry  offices  of  the  different 
companies. 

Great  Central  Railway 
(Marylebone  Station) 

This  is  the  shortest  route,  and  consequently  the 
best  trains  make  the  quickest  journeys  of  any  of 
the  lines,  the  time  occupied  being  a  little  over  two 
hours.  The  usual  service  consists  of  six  departures 
from  London  and  five  from  Stratford-on-Avon 
daily  (except  Sundays),  and  the  return  fares  are 
29J.  $d.  ($7.00)  first  class  and  15J.  ($3.75)  third 
class.     There  are  also  week-end  tickets,  available 

201 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

from    Friday    to    Tuesday,    for  22s.   yd.  ($5.68) 
first  class  and  us.  3<^.  ($2.83)  third  class. 


Great  Western  Railway 
(Paddington  Station) 

By  this  line  there  is  a  fuller  service  of  trains, 
there  being  thirteen  daily  departures  from  London 
and  twelve  from  Stratford-on-Avon,  while  on 
Sundays  there  are  two  outward  and  one  return 
trains.  Several  of  the  trains  have  restaurant  cars. 
The  fares  are  the  same  as  those  on  the  Great 
Central  Railway. 

London  and  North-Western  Railway 
(Euston  Station) 

This  is  the  longest  route,  and  there  are  but 
three  trains  daily  (except  Sundays)  from  London, 
with  four  from  Stratford-on-Avon.  The  fares 
are  identical  with  those  from  Marylebone. 


202 


HOTELS 

Shakespeare   Hotel 

Centrally  situated  on  Chapel  Street,  this  ancient 
hostelry  has  recently  undergone  thorough  renova- 
tion and  enlargement.  The  tariff  for  single  bed- 
rooms ranges  from  /\.s.  6d.  ($1.12)  upwards,  while 
private  sitting-rooms  can  be  had  from  Js.  6d. 
($1.88).  The  prices  for  meals  are:  Breakfast, 
from  ij.  6d.  (37  ct.);  luncheon,  is.  6d.  (62  ct.) ; 
dinner,  4s.  6d.  ($1.12).  Weekly  inclusive  terms  for 
single  bedroom  and  board  range  from  £3  ip.  6d. 

($i8.37> 

Red  Horse  Hotel 

Familiarly  known  as  "  Washington  Irving's 
hotel,"  this  old-fashioned  house  is  situated  on 
Bridge  Street  close  to  the  Avon  and  within  a  few 
minutes'  walk  of  the  birthplace.  At  the  time  of 
writing  the  tariff  is  under  revision,  but  the  rates 

203 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   STRATFORD 

quoted  for  the  Shakespeare  Hotel  will  furnish  an 
approximate  guide. 

Falcon   Hotel 

On  Chapel  Street,  facing  New  Place,  and  hence 
within  easy  walking  distance  of  all  the  Shakespeare 
shrines.  The  boarding  terms,  for  single  bedroom, 
are  105.  ($2.50)  per  day  or  £3  3*.  od.  ($15.75)  Per 
week.  This  house  makes  a  special  feature  of 
providing  bedroom  and  breakfast   for   from    $s. 

1.25). 


Private  hotels,  boarding-houses,  and  furnished 
apartments  are  numerous  in  Stratford,  but  terms 
and  accommodation  vary  so  much  that  the  visitor 
contemplating  a  long  stay  should  put  up  at  one 
or  other  of  the  above-named  hotels  until  suited. 


204 


EXCURSIONS 

Apart  from  the  tour  of  the  Shakespeare  villages 
described  in  the  last  chapter,  numerous  interesting 
excursions  can  be  made  from  Stratford-on-Avon, 
including  the  following  : 


Warwick 
(8  miles  by  one  route  ;  9^  by  another) 

Famous  for  its  Castle,  the  Leicester  Hospital, 
and  St.  Mary's  Church.  The  chief  feature  of  the 
latter  is  the  celebrated  Beauchamp  Chapel,  with 
its  ornate  tombs  of  the  Beauchamps  and  Dudleys. 
The  Castle,  which  is  one  of  the  most  ancient 
baronial  residences  of  England  still  in  use,  may 
be  seen  any  day  on  payment  of  a  small  fee.  The 
literary  pilgrim  should  note  the  birthplace  of 
Walter  Savage  Landor. 


205 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  STRATFORD 

Kenilworth 
(13  miles) 

The  chief  object  of  interest  is  the  ruins  of 
the  historic  Castle  where  the  Earl  of  Leicester 
entertained  Queen  Elizabeth  on  such  a  lavish 
scale  in  1575,  as  described  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in 
his  novel  "  Kenilworth." 

Leamington 
(10  miles) 

A  typical  inland  watering-place,  with  the  usual 
equipment  of  spring,  pump-room,  &c.  Haw- 
thorne describes  the  town  in  his  "  Our  Old 
Home ':'  from  personal  knowledge,  for  he  once 
resided  here  in  a  "  small  nest  of  a  place  "  on 
Lansdowne  Circus. 

Evesham 
(16  miles) 

Interesting  for  its  noble  remains  of  a  Bene- 
dictine Abbey,  of  which  the  most  conspicuous  is 
the  stately  Bell  Tower  dating  from  the  thirteenth 
206 


EXCURSIONS 

century.  On  the  north  of  the  town  is  the  scene 
of  the  battle  of  1265  which  made  Evesham 
famous  in  English  history.  Not  far  distant  is 
the  village  of  Broadwood,  where  Madame  de 
Navarro  (Mary  Anderson)  has  her  picturesque 
home. 

Coventry 
(18  miles) 

Godiva's  city,  or  "  the  City  of  the  Three 
Spires,"  is  famous  for  its  churches,  one  of  which, 
St.  Michael,  dates  from  1 133.  Two  parliaments 
were  held  here  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and  it 
was  one  of  the  prisons  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots. 
It  was  the  home  of  George  Eliot  for  two  years. 

An  ideal  day's  outing  for  those  with  limited 
time  may  be  enjoyed  by  including  in  one  itinerary 
Warwick,  Leamington,  and  Kenilworth.  There 
is  a  regular  coach  trip  in  the  summer  making  the 
Warwick  and  Kenilworth  round,  for  which  the 
fixed  charge  per  person  is  £1  lis.  6a.  ($7.87). 
The  tour  of  the  Shakespeare  villages  may  be  made 
at  a  cost  of  16s.  ($4.00). 


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THE  BALLANTYNE  PRESS 

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